The Get More Smarter Podcast - A Weekly Show About Colorado Politics

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, what are all these MAGA Republicans doing funding my centrist organization? Our 8th favorite member of Congress from Colorado is (still) more concerned with what Twitter thinks than doing anything constructive for her district; and the ethically compromised United States Supreme Court wraps up this term by doing some surprisingly good things on elections and gerrymandering...right before essentially ending Affirmative Action in colleges as we know it.

But first...Spencer Soicher, weekend anchor and political reporter for KRDO in Colorado Springs joins us to chat about politics down there off I-25; sports versus political newscasting; and what on earth is going on with El Paso County Republicans (and the rest of the Colorado GOP in general). 

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, it’s a floor fight! Our 8th favorite member of Congress from Colorado helps prove what we’ve been saying for years: Elect a bunch of clowns, and you'll get a f***ing circus. The new Chairman of the Colorado Republican Party is hands down the best one the GOP has ever had in Colorado...at least as far as Democrats are concerned. And Republican Mike Coffman, the Mayor of Aurora, is trying to become king of the third largest city in the state, or something.

Our guest this week is Dr. Erik Murdock, Interim Executive Director of The Access Fund. We talk about the CORE act, the PARK act, and how legislation around rock climbing may be the key to bipartisanship in Washington. 

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Dark Brandon signed the debt ceiling bill to avert a global economic catastrophe, for now, and House Republicans are revolting! (But not after supplying a sufficient number of votes to pass the bill in the first place) As a result, we have occasion to ask our favorite question, "What the Buck?" and check in with our 8th favorite member of Congress from Colorado as she breaks the first rule of holes...over and over and over again. Guns are the number one killer of children in the country, so it’s no surprise that the firearms-obsessed GOP is losing serious ground with young people -- even young Republicans.

But first...the election in Denver is finally over, and Mike Johnston is the new Mayor of that city to the east. We have our two Denver experts back on the show: Bree Davies and Paul Karolyi from City Cast Denver join us once more to break down the final tally and ask “is there room for two guys from Lakewood in Mike Johnston’s Denver?”

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, we take this show on the road to visit State Treasurer Dave Young and look at all the weird stuff in the vault near his office. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy got a debt ceiling deal that’s about as good as it could possibly be (for Democrats), so don’t tell anyone! Our 8th favorite member of Congress from Colorado -- Rep. Lauren Boebert -- spent so much time trying to get attention for voting no on the debt ceiling bill that she forgot to show up and actually vote no on the debt ceiling deal. And the Denver Mayor’s race ending about as strangely as it began.

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, the Colorado Republican Party isn’t just morally bankrupt! No, the Grand Old Party may actually be financially bankrupt as well, and the national party may bankrupt the entire nation! Yay, fiscal responsibility! Yet another fiscally conservative Republican who lit 5 million dollars of his own money on fire in 2022 losing to Michael Bennet may be talked into lighting another pile of his own money on fire in losing to another Colorado Democrat in 2024. Ron DeSantis made a DeSasterous entrance into a now-very-crowded GOP presidential field and seemingly DeStroyed DeServers at Twitter. And we check in on the Denver mayor’s race with just one week to go.

But first, as Christian nationalism goes from a theoretical threat to a really real oh-crap-here-it-is threat, we check in with Rob Boston, senior adviser at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, to see what kinda Constitution these conservatives are reading.

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, Republicans are losing municipal races across the country as Donald Trump continues to destroy the party, and one of those races is in what at least used to be Colorado’s conservative stronghold. Friend of the pod, Senator John Hickenlooper, seems to share our ranking for our 8th favorite member of Congress from Colorado -- and he has a banger OpEd in the Grand Junction Sentinel this week to prove it. Scott “There is No" Bottoms, who is either our 18th or 19th favorite Republican in the Colorado House, gives up the game on GOP obstruction. And someone with a podcast less popular than ours is lying to his audience, himself, or more likely both.

But first...perhaps we could call this his exit interview...Alan Salazar, Chief of Staff to Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and the godfather of top Democratic Staff in Colorado comes back on the pod to talk all things local government -- including the final days of the race for Denver Mayor.

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, the First Regular Session of the 74th General Assembly has adjourned Sine Die and it was a despicable failure, or a resounding success, or somewhere in between, depending entirely on how much time you spend putting money into Elon Musk’s pocket. To wrap up the session in style, Christy Powell returns to play "Legislating with Crayons," and we check in on our 6th and 8th favorite members of congress from Colorado to see what in the hell they’re up to (spoiler alert: nothing good). 

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast...we've reached EPISODE 150!!! Holy crap!!!

Ahem, Sine Die is upon us, and for those of us who don’t speak latin, that means the 2023 Legislative Session is mercifully coming to an end. With so many outstanding items we ask the question every reporter has asked this week since 1876: "How will they get it all done?” 

The Supreme Court of the United States is an ethical disaster, but really only the Justices appointed by Republican Presidents; Heidi Ganahl, the last statewide elected Republican in Colorado (and possibly the worst candidate in state history) may be planning on Unleashing herself onto the state. Again. We take bets on how big her margin of defeat will be next time. 

With one month to go in the Denver Mayoral Election, two dudes from Lakewood will discuss how the hell it got like this; our 8th favorite congressperson from Colorado clearly, badly needs attention, and we'll give her a little more! And finally, Tucker Carlson may be off the airwaves, but his inexcusably racist influence on the GOP will remain for a long, long time. 

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, The new chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, Dave Williams, is hopefully “not just milking big government” by drawing a taxpayer funded salary at 40 hours a week while also allegedly running the party for 40 hours a week...and this is according to the Republican House Minority Leader. As the scourge of gun violence continues to plague the nation one Republican state Representative says the quiet part out loud -- like really, really loud. A right wing dark money group wins an appeal on a campaign finance case in which they were absolutely, clearly guilty; we ask why bother having laws? And DARK BRANDON RISES to run for re-election. BUT FIRST returning guest and perhaps (perhaps not) returning champion Andrew Baumann is back on the pod with a new poll! This one spells doom for our 8th favorite member of Congress from Colorado.

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

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This week on the Get More Smarter Podcast, House Republicans continue to filibuster without wanting anything; will they do it for the next 15 days or so? The title of this show, the Get More Smarter Podcast, is intentionally bad grammar (for those of you who have emailed us about it), but someone out there in the world is showing why we can’t even joke about it anymore. While more mass shootings happen every single day in this country, Democrats in the Colorado Legislature have passed more bills to address gun violence prevention. And there's a new poll out about our 8th favorite member of congress from Colorado; Rep. Lauren Boebert is in deep, deep cow dung. 

That’s it for this episode! If you loved watching and/or listening to it as much as we loved recording it, you can thank us by subscribing to the pod wherever you listen, following us over on New Old Twitter AKA Bluesky, subscribing to our shiny new channel on YouTube, smashing that subscribe button on our Substack, and sharing this episode with your friends, your enemies, and your 8th favorite Member of Congress from Colorado! THANK YOU so much for listening, and we’ll see you next time!