Craig Westover Continues with His Critique of Dump Bachmann

Craig Westover is not too happy with my interview with Phil Krinkie: I listened to your interview, Eva. First off, you misrepresented what I wrote. Michele did not say that Phil advised her not to hear the bill. It was her decision. It's a legitimate criticism, which Phil makes, that it was the wrong decision -- legitimate and debatable, but Michele never said and I never wrote that Phil advised her not to have a hearing.. She said the TABOR was not being heard in the House. Based on that and the fact that there wasn’t the support in the Senate, she decided not to have the bill heard. I stand corrected. I was relying on memory. I did not have Craig's post in front of me when I talked to Krinkie. Your comments prior to talking to Phil never mentioned anything about a lack of support. You simply wrote, often, that Bachmann didn't have a hearing, implied something nefarious, (Why didn't Bachmann have a hearing?) wrote "developing" and never analyzed why she didn't have a hearing. I posted Tax committee chair, Larry Pogemiller's letter that stated that Senator Bachmann had refused several opportunities to have her bill heard in committee. Bachmann likes to mention that she authored this bill - what she doesn't mention is that when offered, she refused the opportunity to have her bill heard. Phil's comments that Michele didn't do the work to line up supporter’s goes to a possible real issue, but it's also a candidate's remarks. Second, by "support" Michele was referring to the votes, Phil seems to be referring to testifiers -- two different issues. Case in point on strategy. Supporters of Buesgens Education Access Grant legislation lined up a tremendous group to testify in favor of the bill in committee. It still went down along party lines. The Strib gave it about two column inches at the bottom of an inside page. The PiPress, to my knowledge, didn't cover it. A good strategy to bring the bill to a vote? I happen to think so, but others, given the result, might disagree. It's a strategy debate, not good versus evil. How did the bill fail on party lines? There must have been some republicans who helped vote the bill down (or Republicans were scarce from the committee), since in the house Republicans have the majority on all committees. Second, when you do an interview, you don't lick the interviewee's face. You don't say "right, right, right" when they move down the path you want to go. If you want to slant an interview, then you control the interview through questions, not by cheerleading. Also, to give your interview credibility, you ask the negative questions -- why didn't Phil line up support in the House? Probably a good reason, but you leave the question hanging. There are legitimate reasons to criticize Bachmann, as there are all the sixth district candidates. You have little credibility on this issue because your trivial attacks on Bachmann negate anything of substance. As I've told you many times before, you may get rave reviews from people that hate Bachmann, but you hurt your cause outside the base, and on issues like the same sex-marriage amendment, you make if difficult for people like me to gain any traction with Bachmann-conservatives. They point to your actons and say "That's why we need an amendment? It's hard to argue with that. Craig Westover How is my criticism of Bachmann on TABOR connected to the Bachmann amendment?