i wouldn't dance on CO's grave just yet. Although the CO GOP has their issues, they have a huge base of voters in most of El Paso, Douglas and pockets of Arapahoe and Jefferson counties. Those areas are also the fastest growing parts of the state. Also, Buck actually won Indies in 2010 despite being a flawed candidate. I think that Colorado will probably trend towards the democrats in the future but if you've read any of Sean Trende's book, a lot of trends can be suddenly reversed.
The CO GOP is dominated by the Religious Right, which could work in Alabama or Louisiana but doesn't bode well for Colorado's demographics. This isn't the 1990s anymore-people like James Dobson are extremely polarizing in Colorado, and I would dare say that a strong majority are either opposed to him or turned off by his rhetoric, especially the younger generation of Coloradans.
If you compare Colorado to, say, Arizona, which has a much stronger GOP (it helps that the white population in Arizona is less educated, on average, than the Colorado GOP), plus a rather weak Democratic Party (unlike Colorado), it becomes clear why Independents in Colorado would be more inclined to vote Democratic than they are in Arizona.
