Colorado GOP Has a Plagiarism Problem

We all know that Joe Biden plagiarized a speech by former UK Labour Party leader Neal Kinnock back in 1988. In fact, it ended his presidential campaign. Well, those who fail to heed history are doomed to repeat it.

It seems as though former GOP Congressman Scott McInnis has forgotten the lesson Joe learned. Seems that McInnis, who was shocked when he lost the GOP state convention vote to unknown Dan Maes back in May, took $300,000 from a conservative think tank for original white papers on water use in the state. However, the material was not original – much of the material was lifted from a paper written back in 1984 by Greg Hobbs, who currently sits on the Colorado Supreme Court. Of course, as many rethuglicans claim when they’re caught with their pants down, McInnis said this was a “non issue,” and blamed the problem on the researcher he hired. The researcher, a McInnis supporter, has said that McInnis is lying and that the campaign was trying to force him to take responsibility. And further investigation by the Denver Post revealed that while he was a congressman, McInnis plagiarized an op-ed piece written by a Heritage Foundation fellow for the Washington Post, not only in a speech on the House floor, but in his own op-ed piece for the Rocky Mountain News.

McInnis thinks this is much ado about nothing. How wrong he is. The family-run Hasan Family Foundation has demanded he return all of the money they paid him. A complaint is being filed against him with the Colorado Bar Association. And probably worst of all – “influential” party leaders are trying to figure out if they can replace him on the primary ballot. The current top-line holder, Maes, is a teabagger with little money. But he surprised party bosses and pundits by working the grassroots party activists and winning the convention. While current law doesn’t address the issue of replacing a primary candidate with another so there would be a primary, it looks as though McInnis’ campaign is over and Democrats will hold the governor’s mansion. If McInnis stays in the race, he will have to defend himself through November (if he wins next month’s primary) about his lack of originality. If he loses the primary, the GOP is stuck with teabagger Maes. In either case, neither will be able to defeat Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper (say that fast 5 times) come November.

And all I can do is smile, smile, smile.