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Have you seen this?
My friend, who must remain
nameless here, was sitting across his kitchen table. I'd
seen him drink beer before, so I figured he had something
else to show me.
He did. He slid an envelope toward me. It held a letter from none other than Ken Kramer.
Ken Kramer? The Kenneth Bentley Kramer that used to
be our congressman before he gave up his seat so he could
run for the U.S. Senate, and got beat by Tim Wirth?
My friend nodded sadly. The very same Ken Kramer.
Thanksgiving is barely over, so this must be the right time
to express our heartfelt gratitude that there aren't two of
them.
We bowed for a moment of shared thanksgiving, but then discovered we had been too eager. There have to be at least two Ken Kramers.
There's the Ken Kramer who, in 1986, said he had done
all he could do in the House of Representatives, that he
didn't want to serve there any more. And there's the Ken
Kramer of late 1987, who says I pledge that I will
totally devote myself to serving you and fighting for you
as your representative for as long as you want and for as
long as it takes to do the job.
My friend mulled on that for a moment. Maybe he's
like Richard Nixon. Remember, there was always talk of the
Old Nixon and the New Nixon. We could well have an Old
Kramer and a New Kramer.
Old Kramer was a loyal party man. Loyal, anyway, to whichever party ran the local machine. When he lived in Chicago, he was a Democrat. In Colorado Springs, he's a Republican.
As for New Kramer, there's a devout Republican, Joel Hefley, who holds the seat now. Hefley has the announced support of every major Republican mover, shaker and campaign contributor. Kramer will have to hustle his money and support from the GOP grassroots, which means he'll have to get people really fired up. He'll need to attack Hefley viciously; only a month ago, they were friends.
So Kramer's campaign announcement means a brutal party-splitting primary next year.
That's not so bad,
my friend said. It will be
great entertainment. Besides, look at it this way. If
Kramer and Hefley tear each other up, then a Democrat might
get elected. He'll last only one term, because the Fifth
District was designed by Bill Armstrong to be exceedingly
Republican. But if a Democrat squeaks in even once, the
Republicans will have to come up with a better candidate
than the vacuums and blank cartridges that we've been
getting. The GOP won't be able to take us for granted. So
we should come out okay in the long run.
Sure. But what about the short run? I examined Kramer's
Message to 5th District Republican Leaders
again.
There isn't just Old Kramer and New Kramer. There were at least two current Kramers writing that letter, I decided.
One Kramer brags about how employment grew in his district during his tenure as congressman. He can't be the same Ken Kramer that occasionally visited this part of his district, where there aren't any jobs.
One Kramer talks about how he will work hard to balance the federal budget by eliminating wasteful pork-barrel spending. Then the Other Kramer sneaks in a few paragraphs about how he wants to bring more pork into Colorado Springs -- a Space University, a manned space-flight center, more contracts for the Strategic Defense Initiative, etc.
Wait a minute.
My friend opened two more bottles
and handed me one before proceeding. Doesn't that letter
say something about all the high-tech research he'd like to
see in Colorado Springs?
I nodded.
Then I've got it. They're doing some high-powered
world-class biotechnological genetic research down there.
They've cloned Ken Kramer. Or they've come real close,
anyway. They've got two or three guys that all look and
sound like Kramer, but the process hasn't been quite
perfected yet. Their mental circuits haven't been
synched.
So the Kramer clones go around contradicting
themselves. One wants to return to Congress, one doesn't.
One thinks deficit reduction is important and the other
ladles federal gravy into his voter base. One visits us
poor folks in the mountains and sympathizes, and the other
doesn't even know we exist.
I nodded as I drained my bottle. My friend's explanation made perfect sense. But in retrospect, maybe it was just the beer.
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