Post column gets it wrong: Buck has been talking social issues

Denver Post editorial page editor Dan Haley got a fact wrong in his column Sunday.

He wrote in reference to Colorado’s U.S. Senate race:

“No one in 2010 is talking about social issues except Bennet.”

Most likely, Ken Buck is the GOP nominee precisely because he talked so much and so passionately about social issues during the Republican primary, scoring much more love from the social-conservative wing of the Republican Party than his opponent Jane Norton. Arguably the support from social conservatives tipped the hard-fought primary in his direction.

So it would have been true for Haley to write that Buck doesn’t like to talk to him and mainstream journalists and average-regular-angry voters about social issues now. And it’s true that Buck is trying not to talk about social issues to anyone that the primary is behind him.

But Buck undoubtedly blabbed and blabbed about social issues to select audiences who heard his words clearly, and these folks were part of his Tea-Party victory formula.

Once again here’s an exchange from Jim Pfaff’s social-conservative radio show (560 KLZ), but it’s emblematic of how Buck dangled his social-conservative lines to select audiences who wanted to hear them.

Pfaff: “These social issues, like marriage, these are critical issues. It has been one of the great weaknesses of the Republican Party not to deal with these critical issues.”

Buck: “I agree with you that I think it has been a weakness of the Republican Party in the United States Senate, and I think it’s time that we look at the people we are sending back to Washington DC and making sure those people are sticking by the values they espouse on the campaign trail.”

This kind of talk paid dividends for Buck.

As the Colorado Right to Life blog put it after the 2010 primary:

“The biggest victory for Personhood today was Ken Buck, for U.S. Senate.”

So Haley is right, Buck must not have said anything about social issues in 2010 to get that kind of response from a Colorado Right to Life, which we all know cares only about jobs and the economy.