News Nuggets, 31 August 2009: Ken Buck, the people’s choice

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GRASSROOTS BUCK: Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck confirmed today that he is going forward with his campaign to unseat U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. The Denver Post reported Friday that he planned to drop out of the race, but that report was just plain wrong, or at least premature.

In the wake of news that the National Republican Senatorial Committee was putting its weight behind as-yet-undeclared candidate and former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, Buck’s rumored retreat seemed to make sense. That was before the state’s Republican grassroots bloggers led by Ben DeGrow, a policy analyst at the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute, backlashed against the NRSC’s “coronation” of Norton.

Buck said that his campaign inbox was beset by love notes this weekend begging him to stay in the race. So what a turn of events: Firebrand Ken Buck, a strong anti-illegal immigration and pro-gun candidate who occasionally channels Charleton Heston on the stump, may now have new wind in his sails. He’s the populist Washington outsider who’s also now clearly been reverse-coronated by the losing state GOP establishment. Buck’s people couldn’t have planned this wild narrative any better than it turned out, perhaps.

SUPERFOOD: The Colorado State University Agricultural Experiment Station announced today that it has invented a new superwheat named Snowmass. The new wheat is a “high-yielding variety of hard white winter wheat” that can be used to make “ultragrain flour,” which has all the nutritional oompf of whole grains but all the finished delicacy of refined flour. Snowmass has been ten years in the making and, if the CSU photos are any guide, a full field of it is quite beautiful to behold.

Snowmass wheat

ESSENTIALLY FLAWLESS: Sometimes political bloggers just get exuberant and all a-flutter with the conferences they attend and the leadership programs they help organize and they start using all kinds of adjectives and it’s either inspirational or kind of childlike and maudlin and laughable but either way it makes you wonder things like if maybe the air was especially thin in Steamboat Springs this weekend. See what you think.

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