Rep. Gardner: Colorado Could Lead the Way for Romney in the West

An American Conservative Union poll that shows GOP challenger Mitt Romney with a four-point lead over President Barack Obama in Colorado is a sign the GOP challenger may be poised for a sweep of the West, Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., tells Newsmax TV.

Gardner, interviewed at the CPAC Denver meeting, said the poll was good news for Romney and a harbinger of things to come.

“I really felt … that if Colorado was a swing state and not with the West states, it looked good for Mitt Romney so today with announcement of ACU of the numbers, the fact that it shows Mitt Romney ahead by four in Colorado, it is a sign not only of something that’s going to sweep across the western states, but, as Colorado goes, we’ve proven to be a bellwether so many times,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of other states that go as well and when they go for Mitt Romney, it’s not going to go well for the president.”

Gardner said there are a number of issues relevant to Colorado that could also resonate in other swing states, particularly energy.

“You look at some of the energy issues in Colorado, we’ve had tremendous success in oil and gas developments,” he said. “Hydraulic fracturing’s been a large part of that success. That’s the same kind of success that’s occurring in Ohio and throughout some of the other states in the country right now. It’s creating jobs and opportunity.”

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He said Romney should continue to press the president on energy.

“Could they have done more on energy? You bet,” he said. “But that just gives them one more hammer over the president in the next few debates. So it is an opportunity that can come up. We’re still going to have a debate on foreign relations. We’re going to have a debate on national security. Guess what? The energy will and should be a major focus of that.

“President Obama’s idea of energy policy is simply running on empty, but that’s why Mitt Romney’s plan for energy creation, pointing out that the president claims successes that he has no right to claim because the growth in oil and gas production has come from the private sector, not from federal land.”