The Senate race in Colorado between incumbent Senator Mark Udall, a member of the Democratic Party and US Congressman Cory Gardner, a Republican, is very close and is one of a handful of Senate races across the United States that may decide which Party controls the Senate for the last two-years of the presidency of Barack Obama.

Colorado seems to be getting increasingly liberal, twice voting for President Obama, legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, and generally supporting a liberal social agenda. Representative Gardner’s Conservative views on social and economic issues are for the most part far behind the views of most of the people he seeks to represent; those views are clearly indicated by Congressman Gardner’s co-sponsorship of HR 1091, the ‘Life at Conception Act.’ HR 1091 seeks to reverse much of the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision from 1973 that constitutionally enshrined the right of all women to have access to safe and legal abortions. Gardner’s bill strives to undermine Roe v. Wade by banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest and only allowing access to the procedure in cases where the mother’s life is at stake.

Because his social views are so repugnant to the majority of Coloradans, Congressman Gardner has cynically tried to hide positions that he has held for his entire public life. Gardner has tried to obfuscate his co-sponsorship of HR 1091 and has lied about the fact that the bill would even ban many forms of contraception. His plan appears to be to trick Coloradans into voting for him by pretending that if he is elected he’ll reverse positions he has supported for years and will cease to be a radical social Conservative.

Gardner is just one of many Republican candidates running for office in states with socially liberal populations who have been trying to hide their records from voters in the hopes that no one notices their words and deeds before the beginning of the campaign. What Gardner and other lying ‘moderate’ Republicans are basically saying is, “Listen, we know you don’t agree with us on social issues, and find our views on gay marriage, equal pay for equal work, the right for women to choose whether or no they have an abortion, birth control, science (especially Climate Change and evolution), religion, healthcare, LGBT rights, and gun control repugnant, but our economic policy ideas are so incredible that you should ignore everything you don’t like and elect us!”

If you help elect someone who has spent his or her entire career backing positions that you vehemently disagree with because you believe that the politician’s ‘transformation’ in the run-up to an election is genuine, then you will have no one to blame but yourself when that politician predictably governs in a way you don’t like. Don’t allow Cory Gardner and others like him to pull off this blatant attempt at a bait and switch, look into the past of Gardner and other ‘moderate Republicans,’ and don’t allow them to disown any parts of their record that they believe you don’t like: hold their feet to the fire and make them own their records