Impeachment backlash hits Telluride

Denver Post:

Moonbats. Lunatics. Boobs. Bong smokers. Left-bots.

Those insults and more are being heaped on the populace of Telluride after the Telluride Town Council became the first in Colorado to vote for an ordinance to impeach President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

The council hasn't even approved the symbolic measure on second reading, but that hasn't slowed a furious flurry of e-mails to the town and its newspapers and the cancellation of Telluride vacations by those who have no desire to schuss through politically tinged powder or share high-altitude air with "loony liberals."

In a country where a July poll found as many as 46 percent of Americans favor impeachment, Neil Young is singing "Let's Impeach the President," and online stores are selling "impeach" baby bibs, wall clocks and doggie shirts, Telluride is getting hit with a surprising amount of anti-impeachment venom.

"This kind of backlash? I don't know of it happening anywhere else," said David Swanson, Washington, D.C., director of Impeach PAC, a group that now lists more than 180 entities across the country that have passed impeachment measures.

Telluride joins predictable places such as San Francisco, West Hollywood and Berkeley in California and less well- known politically outspoken bergs like Marlboro, Vt., and Chapel Hill, N.C., in voting for impeachment.

Telluride would have been the second municipality in Colorado to do so, but the Nederland Town Board last year voted down a measure that would have urged their congressman to introduce an impeachment measure.

Telluride is a fitting place to be first in the state It's an independent-minded historic-mining-town-turned-resort without a single Republican in office. Democrats, Libertarians and Green Party members fill every elected chair.

Telluride hasn't shied away from other politically charged issues that have drawn outside scorn.

Gay Ski Week continues in spite of cancellations from other skiers. Two years ago, a measure that would have put marijuana at the bottom of the priority heap for local law enforcement became a controversy magnet until voters turned it down.

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Texas and Florida Republicans, who have sent the most e-mails decrying the council's impeachment vote, don't see it that way.

They have canceled a 175-person ski-club visit. One threatened to sell his Telluride vacation home. One called Telluride "the land of radical liberals." One opined that the Telluride council must conduct its meetings while passing around a bong. Another predicted the town would bow to Mecca in the near future.

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It appears that the Telluride's counsel is impeachable in its judgment. I fear their wackiness will hurt the business of a nice lady with an art gallery there, but as for the rest of the town in the immortal words of Jimmy Buffet, "If the phone don't ring its me."