After the post we ran on the similarities between Denver Post editorial page editor Curtis Hubbard’s piece on Jessica’s Law and a fundraising letter from the Colorado Democratic Party, you would think Hubbard would be more subtle about weaving Democrats’ talking points into his writing.  You would be wrong.

It’s happened again, this time with the full admission of Democratic Sen. Pat Steadman.  Last night, Steadman posted the following on his Facebook page:

It is sort of funny how that works.  After Steadman disseminated his gloating post, we decided to take a look at Steadman’s newsletter and compare to Hubbard’s editorial piece, “Sour Grapes in the Colorado legislature”.  While Hubbard’s piece was constrained by word count as Steadman’s newsletter clearly was not, there were some similarities.

Steadman First Paragraph:

“Last Thursday, the Senate approved SB230 on a party-line vote of 19 to 15 and sent the bill to the House. I’m disappointed that my Republican colleagues chose to turn against the work of the Joint Budget Committee, and I’m just a little bit perplexed by their decision.”

Hubbard First Paragraph:

“It was disappointing last week to see not a single Republican in the Colorado Senate case a vote for the 2013-2014 state budget.”

We’ve already posted about why this budget was such a pile of steaming crap, so we won’t bore you with it again, but trust us, it wasn’t so much sour grapes as cautious legislating.  Here’s why Steadman and, apparently, also Hubbard are puzzled by the vote:

Steadman:

“Oddly, the budget in both those years enjoyed unprecedented bipartisan popularity.  No one could remember budgets winning such overwhelming majorities in both chambers.  The budget was held together with popsicle sticks, chewing gun, and baling wire, with risky reductions to our reserves and suspension of payments toward debt obligations.  But both parties came together to embrace it.”

Hubbard:

“Disappointing especially because so many Republicans had been willing to vote for state budgets the last two years, when times were harder and more, not fewer, gimmicks had to be employed to balance the budget.”

If one looks at the time stamps of each document, it would appear that Steadman’s newsletter was sent out early yesterday morning; whereas, the editorial piece was posted a few hours earlier.  So, perhaps Steadman took Hubbard’s points to heart?  Probably not.  Please recall that Steadman, in his Facebook post above, notes that he used these same talking points last Thursday, three days before the editorial piece.

Whether Hubbard and the editorial writers at the Denver Post took their cues from Steadman’s speech on Thursday or whether the two parties were working off the same talking points, we may never know.  It’s certainly safe to say that the Denver Post editorial board and the Democratic Party are working off the same sheet of music.