Ken Buck's spokesman must be thinking that it would have been easier to work for the Tea Party candidate Sharon Angle of Nevada. Angle is also prone to gaffes and nutty conspiracy theories, but she has the good sense to run away from reporters. Buck's campaign hobby is to make crazy statements and then send his spokesman out to reassure voters that they don't care about whatever it was Buck just said.
The latest example, of course, was Buck's comment that global warming is a hoax perpetuated on the American people. Forget the decades of research and science, don't look at the (oil and coal) men (and money) behind the curtain that are financing Buck's campaign, just deny and tap dance. Let's review Buck on climate change: it's happening, but it's not man-made. It's not happening, it's a hoax. Buck is a skeptic. I think that covers it, but there may be more coming.
His climate change misstep follows several reversals on issues and just plain loony comments on gays, women, Medicare, Social Security and taxes. His complex choreography has proven so tortured that it has sparked a cottage industry to invent new terms for his ever-changing positions:
During the primary race, Buck said he supported Amendment 62, the so-called personhood amendment that gives constitutional rights to fertilized eggs, but now he opposes it. This is a BUCKPEDAL.
Buck told David Gregory of Meet the Press that being gay is a choice or influenced at birth, like alcoholism. Then he said he didn't compare being gay to a disease. This is a BUCKTRACK.
Buck believes that our education system was better in the 1950's, when schools were segregated and less than half of white Americans and fewer than one in five African-American students graduated from high school. Buck also believes that women should have no reproductive choices, even if it is a consequence of rape or incest. Both of these positions are BUCKWARD.
In 2006, Buck made the decision not to prosecute a rape case, despite the fact the accused admitted it was rape. Buck made the bizarrely insensitive comment to the Greeley Tribune that the victim had a case of "buyer's remorse." That is just BUCKED UP.
But Buck has to stop soon. There are only so many terms we can use before we, like him, go to extremes.
Call Webster's Dictionary. We believe we have a clusterbuck.