Schaffer jabs McInnis on Twitter, conjuring ghosts of 2008

One thing the whole Scott McInnis plagiarism scandal has dredged up is a bit of not-so-ancient history revealing internal cat fighting in the Colorado Republican Party right before they were swept aside in the 2008 election.

If you recall, that was the election in which former Republican Congressman McInnis told the Colorado Independent he would beaten Sen. Mark Udall if he had chosen to run instead of former Congressman Bob Schaffer.

Schaffer, as the Colorado Statesman pointed out Tuesday, tweeted a little jab at McInnis in the wake of revelations by the Denver Post that the gubernatorial candidate plagiarized chunks of his water articles for the Hasan Family Foundation.

“Family Foundation miffed it paid $300k to congressman for plagarized work & no-shows,” Schaffer’s message to followers on his Twitter account read Tuesday. He conveniently included a link to the Post story.

Statesman reporter Ernest Luning, formerly of the Colorado Independent, relived that blast from the past:

“There’s little love lost between McInnis — who weighed entering the 2008 Senate race but stepped aside, leaving the field to the eventual nominee — and Schaffer, who served alongside McInnis in Congress for three terms and currently sits on the Colorado Board of Education.

“A week before the election, with Schaffer down in the polls, McInnis boasted to the online news site The Colorado Independent that he ‘would have beat Udall,’ and said his ‘biggest threat was getting through the primary.’ He blamed ‘radical elements’ in his own party for thwarting his ambitions.”

Colorado Republican Party chair Dick Wadhams – presumably one of those radical elements – was none too happy with McInnis at the time but rushed to his defense Tuesday, blasting outgoing Colorado Speaker of the House Terrance Carroll for saying McInnis should withdraw and throwing some mud Democratic gubernatorial hopeful John Hickenlooper’s way in the process:

“I know it must be difficult for Terrance Carroll to understand how irrelevant he is as a lame duck state representative. But while he’s on his moral high horse today, maybe he can tell Coloradans if Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper was lying in Copenhagen when he attacked skeptics of global warming or was Hickenlooper lying to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association when he said he himself was a skeptic of global warming,” Wadhams said.

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