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Resident interested in bringing new party to Craig

Fresh politics brewing

Brian Smith
Jim Blevins, shown at his business, Blevins Electronics, is looking to bring the Coffee Party to Moffat County. Blevins said the Coffee Party focuses on open, healthy and civil discussions about politics. He will host a discussion at noon Saturday at Serendipity Coffee Shop, 576 Yampa Ave., for anyone interested in participating in the party.
Courtesy Photo

From his chair, Jim Blevins can keep an eye on the world.

The soft-spoken owner of Blevins Electronics can see Victory Way traffic, CNN broadcasting national news on the TVs surrounding him, and curiously scan the Internet on his desktop computer.

It was from these three sources that Blevins decided to try and bring a new political movement to Moffat County — the Coffee Party.



The Coffee Party, which has recently surfaced on a national level from grassroots origins, believes having “faithful deliberation from multiple vantage points is the best way to achieve the common good,” according to the Coffee Party Web site.

The party doesn’t push for a particular agenda, rather a healthy discussion about issues, which Blevins thinks is the best way to achieve a goal.



“You may think that being civil and rational doesn’t have any force behind it, but I think, ultimately, reason always wins,” he said.

What Blevins thinks needs to have more reason is the current two-party system and government as a whole.

“The current system, I think, and most of the members of the Coffee Party think, is so out of sync with what we would like it to be, that neither the Republican nor Democratic party would be useful,” he said.

Although groups already exist seeking to offer alternative outlets for people to speak their minds, such as the Tea Party, the Coffee Party seeks to do it in a different manner.

Blevins said the Coffee Party stands for “open-minded and rational discussion, as opposed to a predefined set of goals that are pretty extreme,” often associated with the Tea Party.

As an independent, Blevins said he couldn’t identify with the “extreme” nature of other parties such as the Tea Party or MoveOn.org.

“What is most important is the idea of dealing with things in the rational, civilized manner, which for the most part, neither do,” he said. “They have their positions and it doesn’t matter what the facts or the reasons are, those are their positions.”

The Coffee Party, he said, lays somewhere between these extremes and is ideal for other independent voices.

“Most people in America are now independent … I’m sure they are independent for similar sorts of reasons,” he said. “They don’t think either party is really one that they feel they can work within to make the sorts of changes they would like to see.”

A few of the issues Blevins would like to see covered include the wars across the world, Israeli-Palestinian relations and taxes.

Blevins said the Tea Party eyes reducing taxes as well as reducing government size as platforms, but he thinks the issue isn’t being discussed enough to draw those conclusions.

He said taxes are necessary to combat social problems such as starvation, disease and war, among others.

“In a world where the government has to do a lot of things … trying to reduce taxes really doesn’t work if you can see that these other things are necessary,” he said.

He also disagrees about the role of government.

“Trying to reduce government the way the Tea Party would like just isn’t going to work,” he said. “We need a lot of government to interface with the rest of the world.”

Although Blevins has been pursuing bringing the party to Craig and Moffat County for about two weeks, he said he doesn’t have any major supporters.

An upcoming meeting seeks to change that.

He will host a discussion from noon to 2 p.m., Saturday at Serendipity Coffee Shop, 576 Yampa Ave., as part of the Coffee Party’s National Coffee Summit, which involves the party having nationwide coffee shop gatherings during the weekend to discuss politics. The meeting is open to anyone interested.


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