Asked to choose between Obama and Romney for president, Obama led 53-40 in the automated telephone poll of 542 Colorado voters from April 5 to 7. PPP said the margin of error for the
survey is +/-4.2 percent.

The poll found Obama has even bigger leads over both Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich but that Ron Paul does better against Obama than any other likely nominee, trailing only 47-42.

“Colorado was one of several swing and even traditionally red states that President Obama flipped in 2008 — and if his re-election bid were decided today, there would be no looking back. He would actually defeat likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney by an even larger margin than he did John McCain four years ago,” the Democratic firm said in a press release.

McCain lost by nine points in Colorado in 2008.

Obama’s 53-40 lead over Romney here is up 11 points from a two-point edge when PPP last polled the state four months ago.

PPP said Obama has seen his popularity rise in the last few months, while the GOP primary contest has served to damage the GOP candidates’ personal numbers. Romney’s favorability rating is still the best of the Republicans’ except Paul’s, but he sits at 31 percent favorable and 60 percent unfavorable.

Meanwhile, 50 percent approve and 47 percent disapprove of Obama’s job performance, up eight points on the margin from early December (45-50).

Obama has surged in Colorado by firming up support among Democrats. Where Obama was seeing 14 percent of his party cross over for Romney in December, now only 7 percent do.

He has doubled his lead with independents (from 49-37 to 57-31).

“Colorado flipped to the Democratic column in 2008 and it doesn’t look like it’s going back where it came from,” said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling. “Obama is looking exceptionally strong there.”

PPP said the poll was not paid for or authorized by any campaign or political organization.

As Obama has gotten more popular with Coloradans, Romney seems headed in the other direction. His net favorability has gone from -18 (35/53) to -29 (31/60). Romney had a healthy amount of appeal to Democrats earlier with 20 percent viewing him favorably but that’s now down to 11 percent. And he’s extremely unpopular with independents at 25/65.

Romney’s problem with women shows itself in a major way in Colorado. He’s down by 24 points with them at 58-34. Obama’s also up by a 72-17 margin with voters under 30 in the state.

Of those taking the poll, 51 percent were women, 28 percent identified themselves as moderate, with 35 percent identifying as conservative and an equal number as liberal. Thirty-six percent were Democrats, compared with 35 percent Republican and 30 percent independent. The most heavily represented age group was 46-65, which accounted for 36 percent of those polled.

Image of Obama: YouTube screengrab

According to the Tufts University Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), only 5 percent of eligible voters under the age of 30 cast ballots in seven of Tuesday’s contests.

Working from exit polls, CIRCLE found that young voters in Georgia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia distributed their support fairly evenly among the top three candidates. Ron Paul and Mitt Romney each garnered 88,000 votes. Rick Santorum pulled down 86,000 votes and Newt Gingrich trailed with 43,000 votes.

Although comparison with statistics from past years is of limited value because turnout is tied to a host of factors, like what time of year the contest are being held and whether or not there’s a parallel primary being held among Democrats, Tufts researchers say turnout this year is low.

CIRCLE Director Peter Levine said the numbers demonstrate that, for young people, it’s a close race but not a very thrilling one.

“Republicans have some work to do to build youth support,” he wrote in a release.

Abby Kiesa, CIRCLE youth coordinator and researcher, told the Colorado Independent that the underwhelming youth-voter stats should be viewed as a warning sign, not only for the 2012 presidential election, but also for future elections.

“Are the candidates making an effort to get young people to participate? Are they speaking to youth? I see very little of it. Yet research shows that, if you reach out to young people, they vote. It’s a big mistake to write off young people. Behavioral habits in politics develop early. That’s when people form their civic political identities.”

A yawning gap

In the last three general elections, Democratic presidential candidates have won the majority of the youth vote, and in all three elections voters under 30 have been the party’s most supportive age group. That advantage reached new heights in the 2008 Obama-McCain election. According to the Pew Foundation, Obama won 66 percent of the youth demographic, a disparity in support separating young people from any other voting demographic unrivaled in the 40 years Pew has been conducting exit polls.

Pew analysts call what’s happening a generational shift without precedent. In a post-2008 election piece, the organization reported that a 19-point gap among youth voters yawns between Democrats and Republicans. Specifically, 45 percent of people under 30 said they were Democrats and 26 percent said they were Republicans. What’s more, that gap has opened fast. In 2000, when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore, party affiliation was evenly split.

Kiesa acknowledges that there have been pockets of enthusiasm on the Republican side this year tied to Ron Paul, the Texas congressman whose libertarian views have traditionally appealed to young people. The larger problem remains, however, she said, pointing out that, despite fairly intense college campus support, Paul has yet to even significantly push ahead of Romney in votes cast among young participants overall.

It’s also an open question whether Paul voters will back any other Republican in the increasingly likely event that he fails to win the party’s general-election nomination.

“Some Paul supporters will move over, but I think most probably won’t,” said Steve Fenberg, executive director of youth politics group New Era Colorado. “Young people are frustrated with politics and Paul is saying something different. He’s being honest and shaking things up. That appeals. But that’s a generalized feeling that doesn’t always translate when you’re talking about governing particulars or a [party] platform. I think a lot of [Paul supporters] will sit it out and others will vote for Obama– and that’s because the Obama campaign will court them.”

Take away the blip in enthusiasm being generated by Paul, and the GOP youth-voter problem this year seems even more grave. Fenberg sees the issue as a matter of priorities reflected in campaign infrastructure.

“People think 2008 was an amazing year [for youth-voter turnout] because of Obama– that young people suddenly woke up and voted just because of Obama. The trick, though, was that the Obama campaign invested millions of dollars on the youth vote. There was enormous focus on that. The GOP won’t court young people. I wish they would, but I don’t see it. I don’t see them spending the money it will take to turn out the vote.”

The mobilized mobilizing

Fenberg is referencing mechanics tied to election-campaign ground games that the researchers at Pew and scholars like University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket have explored in depth since 2008. Young people didn’t just vote for Obama, they were also unusually active in his campaign. Nearly 30 percent said they attended at least one campaign event that year, which was very likely the result of hardcore online and offline efforts carried out to mobilize supporters. Those mobilized supporters mobilized more supporters.

All told, the McCain campaign opened fewer than 400 field offices. The Obama campaign opened more than 700, many of them in battleground states. Obama opened field offices in 43 percent of counties in eleven swing states. Masket, in his 2009 study of the Obama ground game, found that Colorado counties with an Obama office saw at least a three-point increase in Democratic vote totals.

In Colorado and the other battleground states, Pew found that young people were contacted in much greater numbers by the Obama campaign than were contacted by the McCain campaign. Battleground youth voters were also more likely to be contacted than were older battleground voters, which Pew reported was a “significant reversal from past patterns.”

Nationally, the Obama campaign contacted 25 percent of young voters whereas the McCain campaign contacted 13 percent, that disparity another departure from the past: In 2004, the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns reached out to young people in nearly the same percentages. In a few key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Nevada, Florida and Indiana, the percentage of young voters contacted by the Obama campaign reached up to 50 percent and 60 percent, doubling and tripling McCain campaign efforts and notching some of Obama’s biggest and/or most significant point spreads on Election Night.

Kiesa agrees with Fenberg that GOP strategists don’t seem to have properly studied the 2008 voting statistics.

“There’s enormous opportunity for Republicans,” she said. “Youth turnout was high, but not across the board: white youth voters, not so much, and lots of red-state youth didn’t vote. Republicans can play a role in closing the enthusiasm gap.”

MTV Mitt

If Republicans are going to do that, Kiesa said that perhaps a good way to start would be to retool their youth message. Right now, the main topic the candidates talk about with young people is the national debt.

“I did see Romney take a question from MTV last week,” she said. “It was the debt [again], how it hangs over young people’s future.”

Fenberg notes that young people are disproportionately plagued by thin job opportunities in the recovery and so they care deeply about the economy. He said that talking about expanding job opportunities for young people is different than talking about the national debt.

“The debt argument, you get the feeling when young people mention it, they’re just saying that because it has entered the echo chamber. I don’t think it’s an issue that keeps young people up at night. The national debt is wonky.

“So far, I just don’t hear a message that will resonate,” he said. “On the social issues– tolerance, reproductive rights– [the candidates] are not in line with what young people think. The low turnout [on Super Tuesday] doesn’t surprise me at all. I don’t think this primary has been a conversation that appeals to young people.”

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According to a Fox News Latino poll released Monday, “likely Latino voters indicated that 73 percent of them approved of Obama’s performance in office, with over half those questioned looking favorably upon his handling of the health care debate and the economy, at 66 percent and 58 percent respectively.”

Fox News Latino adds that the poll shows “former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 35 percent of Latino voter support, to Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s 13 percent, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s 12 percent, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s 9 percent.”

GOP campaign strategists have repeatedly said that the 2012 elections will hinge on economic issues, a sentiment echoed by Alexandra Franceschi, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee. Franceschi told Fox News Latino that the upcoming election will be “a pocketbook election,” and that “Barack Obama has failed Latinos on the economy.”

But the GOP contenders will likely fail Latino voters when it comes to other issues. In late January, Resurgent Republic, a non-profit that “gauges public opinion” and advocates for conservative principles, indicated that Republicans might face challenges when it comes to garnering Latino votes, especially when it comes to issues like immigration policy: “Republicans continue to face challenges on their party brand, and immigration reform garners wide, bipartisan approval.”

According to Fox News Latino, almost one-quarter of Latinos said they would be more willing to vote for a Republican if Florida Senator Marco Rubio was on the ticket.

Sylvia Manzano of Latino Decisions reported in late February that Republican candidates’ opposition to the DREAM Act would not raise their appeal with Latino voters, as the act “has broad appeal to the Latino electorate.”

“Ron Paul has voted against it already as a House member, while Romney and Santorum vowed to veto the bill given the opportunity,” wrote Manzano. “Gingrich prefers compulsory military service as the path to citizenship for those whose parents brought them into the country as children without authorization.”

And, while Latino voters are overwhelmingly opposed to state immigration enforcement bills in Arizona, Alabama and Georgia, Romney and Santorum have both voiced their support for those state laws.

Speaking at an energy summit hosted by the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Santorum said that the Obama administration was leading “a war on fossil fuels” and he vowed, if he were elected, to open up more public lands to drilling.

Gingrich went further. “This is the most anti-American energy administration we have ever had,” he said, blaming Obama for high gas prices and calling the administration’s “all-of-the-above” energy plan “very dangerous and very destructive.”

Outside conservative politics circles, however, on the ground in the burgeoning gas fields above Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale formation, for example, or on the plains covering the Niobrara formation in northern Colorado and Wyoming, where big-rig oil-and-gas traffic streams over two-lane roadways, the Obama years look more like the era described recently by Bloomberg News and quoted this past Sunday by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

“The U.S. is the closest it has been in almost 20 years to achieving energy self-sufficiency… Domestic oil output is the highest in eight years. The U.S. is producing so much natural gas that, where the government warned four years ago of a critical need to boost imports, it now may approve an export terminal… The U.S. has reversed a two-decade-long decline in energy independence, increasing the proportion of demand met from domestic sources over the last six years to an estimated 81 percent through the first 10 months of 2011.”

Friedman was exploring the idea that the U.S. should adjust its trade policy to reckon with the fact that the country is producing so much energy, and using less oil as a percentage of fuel source, that it might soon land among the world’s top oil exporting nations. From that perspective, even high oil prices look like a good thing for the U.S. economy.

“This transformation could make the U.S. the world’s top energy producer by 2020,” Friedman wrote. “We could raise more [energy] tax revenue [as a result], freeing us from worrying about the Middle East, and, if we’re smart, [financing] a bridge to a much cleaner energy future.”

As the Colorado Independent has reported consistently for the last two years, oil and gas companies have leased land nationwide that they have yet to make productive and they hold thousands of unused drilling permits for sites all across the mountain west.

Likewise, in Colorado, stiffer state regulations on oil and gas production put in place by Democratic Governor Bill Ritter three years ago and attacked repeatedly by Republicans as “job killers” have not discouraged major new oil and gas drilling. Larimer and Weld Counties, for example, the counties sitting atop the Niobrara, have seen dozens of new oil and gas wells drilled in the past year or so and will see a great deal more drilled in years to come, no matter who sits in the White House or in the governor’s office.

[ Video: TCI's Troy Hooper. Image: Riding above the Niobrara shale formation. ]

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Newt Gingrich drew nearly 13 percent of the Colorado vote and Ron Paul drew nearly 12 percent.

As in Colorado, Santorum won in Missouri and Minnesota Tuesday by working the states harder than did his rivals. Romney, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul mostly ignored the three contests, an understandable strategy given that none of the races assigned delegates for the Republican nomination.

Colorado caucus goers, for example, were only choosing delegates to attend a party convention later this year.

In key ways, the Colorado contest mirrored the Iowa contest that kicked off the 2012 election season. Santorum won the caucuses there in a nail biter that similarly switched back and forth between Santorum and Romney– it did so there for weeks after the votes were cast. Likewise, as he did in Iowa, the social conservative Bible-thumping former Pennsylvania senator appealed strongly to Colorado’s intense and relatively large evangelical Republican voter base, which was unlikely to swing substantially for either Mormon Mitt Romney or philandering husband Newt Gingrich.

Tuesday’s results aren’t likely to greatly influence the Republican primary race. Romney appears to be marching to the nomination slowly but surely, notching wins in states that assign delegates to the national party’s nominating convention. A month from now, the Super Tuesday contests will see ten states cast votes, seven of which are primaries that award nominating delegates, and one of those will take place in Virginia, where only Romney and Paul have qualified for the ballot and where 49 delegates stand to be won.

Indeed, the Colorado contest was significant mostly as a general election forecast. On that score, Republicans can not be too pleased.

Tea party enthusiasm swept Republicans into office around the country in 2010 but not so much in Colorado. Democrats won the governor’s office and a crucial U.S. Senate seat. After years of bashing President Obama and looking forward to the opportunity to replace him, tea partiers here seem to be a bit at sea, their enthusiasm cooled.

With 99 percent of counties reporting, fewer Republican voters appear to have turned out for the caucuses this year than they did in 2008, before the tea party movement was even born. Perhaps more significant, Mitt Romney defeated John McCain in that year’s caucuses by pulling down roughly 42,200 votes. This year, the likely eventual GOP nominee garnered a mere 23,000 votes. Romney is not likely to suddenly energize Colorado Republicans in the fall.

By contrast, Obama in 2008– admittedly a relative unknown who was running in a spectacularly close primary against Hillary Clinton– drew 80,000 votes of 120,000 cast by Colorado Democratic caucus goers.

Obama’s campaign has been working the state at a low pace but almost non-stop since then.

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Italian weekly newsmagazine “Oggi” recently tracked down Santorum’s “dyed in the wool red” relatives in Riva del Garda. His grandfather’s generation opposed Mussolini and his Black Shirt fascists in the run-up to World War II and established a solid communist-socialist family political tradition.

“There are Santorums who would be turning in their graves,” one of Santorum’s relatives told the magazine, referring to Rick Santorum’s right-wing Catholic politics.

Last month the UK Guardian got hold of the story and translated many of the quotes.

“Rick’s grandfather, Pietro, ran the local post office and had strong liberal convictions,” said Maria Malacarne Santorum, whose late husband was a cousin of the former Pennsylvania Senator.

“Back in the 1920s, he understood what was happening in Italy. He was a convinced anti-Fascist.

“The political climate was stifling and so in 1925 he left for America, to work in a coal mine in Pennsylvania.”

Mrs Santorum, who is reportedly 83 years old, said Rick Santorum should moderate his views.

“To be opposed to homosexuality and divorce is damaging. Principles count but in politics you need to be open-minded.”

Michela Santorum said “Cousin Ricky’s” radical ice cube habits shocked his Italian relatives.

“Me and my brothers were amazed at the number of ice cubes that he put in his drinks,” she said. “But he was crazy for Italian food, including polenta.”

Santorum’s candidacy has attracted support from evangelical Christian groups. It has also re-introduced the sweater vest as adult wear.

Some would say Santorum’s “denial of reality” is apparent in the fact that he seeks to put into place policies in the 21st-century United States that would outlaw non-procreational heterosexual sex, gay sex, gay legal rights, abortion and birth control. Santorum also recently told a crowd at an energy forum in Golden, Colorado, that climate change is an international hoax perpetrated by scientists in league with elected officials looking to gain control of the U.S. economy.

Colorado Republicans are attending caucuses tonight to select a candidate to run against Obama in the general election.

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Last week, the Johnstown-based group (which operates over a large swath of the northern Front Range but lists Johnstown south-east of Ft. Collins as its postal address) sent out an email blast littered with exclamation points announcing Paul’s brief visit to Denver. It also pointed caucus goers to the group’s “no rhetoric, all facts” GOP Presidential Voter Guide, a deadpan exercise in candidate demolition that leaves no doubt where the group stands.

The authors of the guide skewered Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as unreliably conservative in both fiscal matters and in checking government overreach.

The guide’s list of facts on Romney, for example, opens on “Romneycare” and underlines that the Massachusetts healthcare plan steered into law by Romney was the blueprint for tea party-detested “Obamacare.” The list then moves onto Romney’s support for the big government-style anti-free-market TARP bailouts, gun right restrictions and climate change “cap and trade” proposals. The list wraps by calling Romney a “flip flopper” on amnesty for undocumented residents.

By contrast, not a single unqualified negative comment falls into the Ron Paul list. Paul’s record on government spending is described as “stellar.” Even Paul positions typically controversial on the right, such as his anti-interventionist foreign policy and commitment to ending “War on Terror” policies and programs, are described in an unabashed positive light.

The Northern Colorado Tea Party facts on Romney:

• Passed “Romneycare” into Massachusetts law, which eventually became the blueprint for Obamacare
• Supported TARP
• Opposed Obama’s stimulus plan and urged Republicans to vote against it
• Supported Cap & Trade legislation in Massachusetts
• Has also supported his fair share of anti-gun legislation and has refused to return the National Association of Gun Rights survey
• Has a horrible record on taxes, er, should I say fees…although he opposed tax hikes as governor, he imposed a mountain of “fees” to help balance the budget
• Has a mixed record on spending.  He did successfully cut government spending during the first part of his first term, but loosened the purse strings during the later years.  During his time as governor, he did save the state millions by cutting out waste within the system, eliminating meaningless government jobs, and going after local earmarks instead of dipping into the states rainy day fund.
• Supports ethanol subsidies
• Supports “Right to Work” legislation and states
• Mitt is a flip-flopper on amnesty and ultimately supports a plan similar to Newt’s, granting amnesty for “some”.

The Northern Colorado Tea Party facts on Paul:

• Voted against TARP
• Voted against Obamacare
• Voted against Obama’s stimulus
• Voted against auto bailouts and Cash for Clunkers
• Voted against Cap & Trade
• Supports Right to Work legislation
• Has never voted to raise the debt ceiling
• Is an outspoken advocate for the Tenth amendment and states rights
• Is an outspoken advocate for the Constitution and limited government
• Strongly supports auditing the Federal Reserve
• Has an excellent record on gun control, recently being crowned the “Defender of the Second Amendment” by Gun Owners of America.  He is the only candidate remaining to have returned the National Association of Gun Rights survey with a 100% score.
• He has an excellent record on taxes, never voting for a tax increase and always supporting tax cuts across the board.  He has voted to cut taxes by $80 billion in the past 5 years, voicing his opinion that cutting taxes is the only way to stimulate the economy
• He has an excellent record on spending voting against nearly every big spending bill and was 1 of  41 congressman to vote against No Child Left Behind.
• His stellar spending record aside though, he has become a strong supporter of earmarks giving him an undesirable 29% on the Club for Growth’s rePORK card (although earlier in his career he never used earmarks).  He believes that earmarks are held to much higher accountability and that if the federal government is taking funds from his state constituents, it is his responsibility to bring the funds back to them.  He typically votes no on the same bills he is inserting his earmarks in.
• Believes we need to end the billions of dollars we spend annually in foreign aid, especially to the countries we are at war with.
• Supports securing our borders and coastlines, supports enforcing visa rules by tracking and deporting anyone who overstays their visa, opposes amnesty, and supports ending birthright citizenship.
• Believes we should bring our troops home and readdress our approach regarding the War on Terror and military spending along with the waste, fraud and corruption that may go along with it.

It’s hard to say how much influence the Northern Colorado Tea Party leaders will exert on caucus activity today, but the group’s large presence in the state’s fourth congressional district and strong support for CD4 candidate Cory Gardner in 2010 likely played a large role in Gardner’s easy victory over Democratic incumbent Betsy Markey. The group also lead the state-wide tea party support that boosted Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck’s U.S. Senate bid that same year, propelling him to primary victory over establishment candidate Jane Norton.

Messages to the Northern Colorado Tea Party went unanswered this week, so its loose membership in the thousands or even perhaps tens of thousands couldn’t be confirmed. Estimates, however, put state-wide tea party membership in 2010 at something like 220,000. If those numbers have been even moderately sustained, tea partiers will have a significant impact at the GOP caucuses.

There are roughly 1.08 million registered Republicans in Colorado and only roughly 10 percent of those will turn up to caucus tonight. Politically engaged tea partiers will make up a disproportionate number of attendees.

Although tea party support for Paul will certainly thin Romney support, it bodes particularly ill for rival runner-up candidates Santorum and Gingrich.

Santorum at least is likely to do well among the state’s large Colorado Springs-based evangelical voting bloc.

“I ask you to reset this race,” Santorum told voters here this past weekend. “Create an opportunity for someone who can speak to Americans about what America is all about.”

Yesterday in Golden, just miles from the country’s National Center for Atmospheric Research, the former Pennsylvania senator let loose a stemwinder at an energy forum in which he attacked international climate scientists as partners in a conspiracy to willfully create panic that would open up the country to totalitarian-like government control of the economy. He laced his talk with tent-revival-style reference to god’s will and man’s dominion over the natural world.

Yet it may be Gingrich who seems to be hoping most for a miracle in Colorado. He still has minimal campaign presence in the state and has spent almost no time here. His three wives and outrageous Tiffany tab won’t help him win the Focus on the Family-Tim Tebow vote and his term as House Speaker and then as Beltway-influence peddler are sure to undercut his attraction to anti-government tea partiers.

Romney, however, despite tea party and evangelical resistance, may pull off a key victory in the Centennial State. He has gained momentum from a series of recent primary victories and will be boosted here as he was this weekend in Nevada by the Mormon vote. Mormons make up roughly 5 percent of all religious adherents in Colorado, or something like a community of 140,000 believers who generally vote Republican.

Romney enjoyed 60 percent support among Colorado Republicans in 2008, burying John McCain in that year’s caucuses.

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“We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not for the Earth’s benefit,” Santorum told an audience at the Colorado School of Mines where he was a guest speaker Monday at the Colorado Energy Summit.

“We are the intelligent beings that know how to manage things and through the course of science and discovery if we can be better stewards of this environment, then we should not let the vagaries of nature destroy what we have helped create,” Santorum said to applause from the conservative crowd.

The former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania argued that science has been hijacked by politicians on the left, and that climate change is “an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life,” Santorum said.

Rick Santorum speaking in Golden. (Photo by Troy Hooper)

Gingrich, speaking an hour before Santorum at the Colorado Energy Summit, said he regretted a TV commercial he shot with Democrat Nancy Pelosi that addressed climate change. He called it “the dumbest single thing I’ve done in five or six years. … It was stupid.” He said part of his Pelosi hangover is tied to his diminishing confidence in climate science. Asked by a man in the audience whether he believes human activities can cause climate change, Gingrich pleaded ignorance.

“I believe we don’t know. I am an amateur paleontologist. The planet has changed its temperature a number of times,” Gingrich rambled. “… If you look at the Antarctic today, you’ll figure it [must've been] a lot warmer when the dinosaurs were there. So what I’ve said in the past is I’m happy to take prudent measures that aren’t very expensive. So if we can find relatively inexpensive, safe nuclear power, I’m for it. The fact that Iowa produces 20 percent of its electricity from wind is fine. There’s a lot of things you can do with the margin. What I would not do is I would not turn the power over to bureaucracy to run the entire country. I have always opposed cap and trade …”

Newt Gingrich at the Colorado School of Mines on Monday. (Photo by Troy Hooper)

Oil and gas, he said, is “so central” to the nation’s future energy portfolio.

“Environmentalists,” Gingrich added, “have been infiltrated over the last 40 years by people on the left who are against business and against local control and they use the environment as an excuse.”

Santorum, meanwhile, claimed “there is a war on fossil fuels in this country by [the Obama] administration.” Like Gingrich, the native Pennsylvanian vowed to open up more public lands to oil and gas drilling. Don’t worry, he promised, Yellowstone would be left alone. But there is a lot of Bureau of Land Management and other federal land that Santorum said would be better served by the oil and gas industry, ranching or other human uses. He cringed every time he mentioned the Endangered Species Act and blamed it for hurting business. Santorum told the story of how the Endangered Species Act is preventing the harvesting of a forest with profitable wood in his home state.

“We have the Endangered Species Act, which has prevented us from timbering all sorts of acreage there,” he said. “It’s bankrupted the school district and the like because of the government’s inability to allow for us to care for our resources. A forest in my opinion is like a garden and you’ve got to care for it. If you don’t care for it, you leave it to nature and nature will do what it does: boom and bust.”

Stressing the importance for the country to provide cheap energy to its citizens, Santorum blamed the recession not on sub-prime mortgages or the derivatives market but on spiking fuel prices.

“We went into a recession in 2008. People forget why. They thought it was a housing bubble. The housing bubble was caused because of a dramatic spike in energy prices that caused the housing bubble to burst,” Santorum told the audience. “People had to pay so much money to air condition and heat their homes or pay for gasoline that they couldn’t pay their mortgage.”

The nation’s energy policy is a key talking point this election season.

“This is the most anti-American energy administration we have ever had,” Gingrich said. “… You have the highest cost of gasoline in American history. And I think that if you’re an editorial writer at the New York Times and you live in a high-rise in Manhattan and you ride the subway to work, it may not occur to you that for most Americans a high price of gasoline is a real problem.”

Gingrich called Obama’s “all-of-the-above” energy plan “very dangerous and very destructive.” He claimed the need for the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act underscores the EPA’s overreach.

GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney was also in Colorado on Monday, giving speeches in Grand Junction and Centennial. He is scheduled to speak in Loveland on Tuesday morning. Romney, also a proponent of the Keystone XL pipeline, looks primed for a big win in Colorado. He leads Republican voters in the state with 40 percent to 26 percent for Rick Santorum, 18 percent for Newt Gingrich, and 12 percent for Ron Paul, according to Public Policy Polling. Paul was in Colorado last week.

Check out this video shot at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden on Monday of Rick Santorum discussing his views on public lands, domestic energy and his problems with public education:

Here, Newt Gingrich discusses U.S. energy policy in Golden where he says, “If you want to measure what our goal is, it is to ensure that no American president ever again bows to a Saudi king …”

There was that ad from Newt Gingrich’s Super PAC, Winning the Future, which was, as Dave Weigel put it, “the sort of thing that will make a Republican voter’s bile bubble up and come shooting out of every waiting orifice.”

There was also Dan Check’s “Romney Income Calculator,” an online “game” of sorts that attracted mega-hits, in which you type in your working-person annual salary to discover how long it would take an under-taxed fortune to generate the same amount of money for Mitt “corporations are people, my friend” Romney. The tragi-comic oddly hypnotizing math works out to inform that if you make less than $100,000 a year, it takes Romney’s money about a day and a half to out earn you.

Which cast the tax plan Romney is pushing under a spotlight. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, the plan would have saved Romney $4.1 million last year, effectively cutting his taxes in half. That math leads to more math, like this, for example: As president, Romney could end up paying himself $16,4 million in tax breaks over his first term in addition to earning the president’s $400,000 per year salary. So, electing Mitt Romney could cost the American tax payers $18 million in Mitt Romney’s take alone.

There was in addition, the problem of “the help.” The wealthy Romneys with their three homes appear to be stingy with their maids (or maybe they’re paying them under the table). Either way, more great news.

There was also the matter of his just plain losing voting contests. “Republican primary frontrunner” Romney lost to Santorum in Iowa and then he lost to Gingrich in South Carolina. So he has won only in New Hampshire.

Now Gingrich is tied with Romney or leading in Florida polls. The primary there is Tuesday.

Romney is no longer the frontrunner and he is not an inevitable nominee.

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The letter, signed by 45 Catholic leaders says:

Mr. Gingrich has frequently attacked President Obama as a “food stamp president” and claimed that African Americans are content to collect welfare benefits rather than pursue employment. Campaigning in Iowa, Mr. Santorum remarked: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

“At a time when nearly 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty, charities and the free market alone can’t address the urgent needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. And while jobseekers outnumber job openings 4-to-1, suggesting that the unemployed would rather collect benefits than work is misleading and insulting,” the letter adds.

“This statement is urging prominent Catholics in the race to go back and look at church teaching,” John Gehring, the Catholic outreach coordinator at Faith in Public Life, told The Florida Independent, adding “that the letter is also about poverty.”

“The Catholic bishops have been incredibly important in raising a prophetic voice that really challenges those who think that the free market alone can sort of solve our economic problems,” Gehring said. “You have Catholic conservative leaders, like John Boener, Paul Ryan, Rick Santourm, Newt Gingrich and they’ve all been looking to dismantle vital social safety nets.”

Faith in Public Life “works to promote a common good message in the media and helps progressive and moderate faith leaders to get their message out,” Gehring exlained. “We’ve done a lot of work around common ground issues on abortion, we try to talk with pro-choice leaders. We provide an alternative voice, making sure that the values debate is not one-sided. For many decades the Christian right has dominated political conversations over faith and values.”

Gehring highlighted the idea of “intrinsic evil,” adding that “a lot of people look at Catholic teaching and think about abortion as being a preeminent political issue, and that is true, but the bishops are also very clear that racism and torture — where Santorum is very bad on, Santurom has been an apologist for enhanced interrogation — are an intrinsic evil.”

He also said that Gingrich and Santorum’s “rhetoric around class and racial issues is in many ways out of line with Catholic social teaching. That is something Catholic voters will be concerned about, particularly given that both Santourm and Gingrich have not been shy about talking about the importance of their faith from a personal perspetcive and also how it shapes their political views as well.”

Color Lines, which reports on racial justice issues, reported Thursday that ”Gingrich argues that the reason so many people are on food stamps is not that the economy has thrown millions into poverty, but rather that lazy black families are getting on the dole and don’t want to work. Earlier this month, Gingrich told an audience in New Hampshire, ‘If the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.’”

Color Lines adds: “Gingrich’s attack on the food stamp program is not surprising; it’s the kind of politics that he’s been helping to perfect for over 30 years.”

On Saturday, Gingrich won the GOP primary in South Carolina by a wide margin over presumed frontrunner Mitt Romney.