“Please don’t make me fight the mean people in DC”

PeakNation™, we swear we don’t have a string that makes Gov. John Hickenlooper speak our talking points when pulled, he just does that on his own.  Over these past four years, the two biggest areas in which Hickenlooper has failed Colorado are: his complete and utter lack of any sort of ability to be a leader and his willingness to listen to everyone but average Coloradans, the very people for whom he is supposed to advocate.  In Hick’s latest chapter, Hick told an energy summit that his refusal to make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline is because he doesn’t want to piss off people in Washington, D.C.  Hick knows he is the Governor of Colorado, right?  And, not, say, the Governor of Washington, D.C. (Spoiler: D.C. doesn’t have one).  As Peter Marcus at The Durango Herald writes:

Gov. John Hickenlooper on Wednesday told a room full of Western gas and oil executives that he hasn’t taken a position on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline because he hasn’t wanted to “piss off” the powers that be in Washington, D.C.

“I’ve avoided taking a position (on the Keystone pipeline) because it’s just going to piss off a lot of people in Washington that I don’t need to piss off, and my opinion is not going to change anybody’s opinion there,” Hickenlooper said during a panel discussion at the Rocky Mountain Energy Summit at the Colorado Convention Center. [the Peak‘s emphasis]

Good to know we now also have a fraidy-cat as a Governor who cares more about what people in Washington, D.C. think about him than his very own constituents here in Colorado.  Good to know Hickenlooper would rather have bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. think highly of him than create more jobs here in Colorado.  Good to know that if there is ever a fight between Colorado and Washington, D.C., we have a Governor that is equivalent to France—“Je surrender!”

The caricature Hickenlooper likes to push of himself is a man above politics who only goes where the facts lead him.  The fact that he says he is still on the fence about the Keystone XL pipeline completely blows up that image.  Not only has President Obama’s very own State Department signed off on the pipeline, but even the hugely-Democratic unions are for it.  With such strong bipartisan support for it, it is only Obama’s determination to play politics with the pipeline that is preventing it from going through.  Hickenlooper’s refusal to side with the facts on the Keystone XL pipeline shows he is just as politically calculating as all those politicians he claims to be above.

This whole episode just reinforces what we already know: Hickenlooper’s inability to lead has created a vacuum of power that out-of-staters are more than willing to fill to the detriment of Coloradans.  It is time to have a Governor again who isn’t afraid to fight for Colorado.