Wisconsin Republicans can’t count to one

In his State of the State address, Governor Scott Walker accused budgeters of “an addiction to one-time federal dollars.” Addiction requires repetition, which is inherently not present in “one-time federal dollars.”

Walker followed up the statement by saying the federal funds, “are no longer options.”

Thanks for the info, Captain Obvious.

Undeterred, RPW 1st Vice Chairman Brian Schimming, stepping into the shoes of lead stuntman Reince Priebus, says  ”no more relying on one time federal stimulus dollars” to balance the state budget.

Apparently the Republican Party of Wisconsin can’t count to one.

Ron Johnson hires ex-Bachmann staffer and non-Wisconsinite

Fresh off hiring a Virgina lobbyist as chief of staff, Ron Johnson adds a former communication director for crazy Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann to his office. As far as I can tell, working for our  right-to-lightbulb legislation sponsoring neighbor is the closest our new senator’s communication director Mary Vought comes to having ties to Wisconsin.

Johnson did manage to hire a citizen of Wisconsin as his state office director. I suppose it’s tough to convince a Washington insider to move here in December. The current temperature is eleven degrees.

The rest of Johnson’s hires are not accessible via Google search.

Is Ron Johnson making any of these decisions himself? Or is he leaving the hiring to federal employee turned lobbyist turned federal employee Don Kent, assisted by career politician and fundraising buddy Mitch McConnell?

When Russ Feingold first ran for the United States Senate he pledged a staff of mainly people with Wisconsin backgrounds. He kept that promise, because he knew his job was to serve the people of Wisconsin. I don’t know what Ron Johnson thinks his job is.

NRSC attacks on Herb Kohl part of candidate recruitment effort?

I don’t know if I can take 22 and a half more months of this. If you thought the last campaign season was stupid, the NRSC is trying to blow your mind. Fresh off a couple of November attacks on Sen. Herb Kohl that could have only fallen on campaign-weary deaf ears, the NRSC was moaning yesterday that Kohl “refuses to tell Wisconsinites where he stands” on the vote to extend the Bush tax cuts.

Bear in mind:

• GOP senator-elect Ron Johnson won an election by refusing to talk to the media.

• The controversial aspect of extending the Bush tax cuts are the provisions on the “rich” which includes Kohl more so than nearly any other senator.

And the kicker:

• Kohl voted for the package yesterday, saying it “protects the middle-class from tax increases and preserves critical unemployment benefits. It is a reasonable compromise to get past the partisan bickering and support our struggling economy.”

Ultimately Senator Kohl took the Republicans’ preferred position when it came time to vote. What now?

The Republican Party of Wisconsin is blogging with glee over Dem pollsters Public Policy Polling calling Kohl’s seat safe, noting Feingold’s seat was considered solid in 2009. The RPW is forgetting the Republicans actually have to do some governing over the next two years, instead of just campaigning on “NO!” a luxury they had from 2009-10. It’s doubtful Kohl and all his money will go down following the divided-government-mess this 112th Congress will no doubt prove to be.

The NRSC may be doing this premature Kohl-bashing in an attempt to recruit a candidate. It will not be an easy task. The Sconz points out Kohl won by 18 points even during the Republican Revolution of 1994. In 2006 Kohl stomped his competition 2-1. That was admittedly a good year for Democrats, but 2012 will not be the cakewalk Republicans had this year. The 2010 midterms showed voters have a short attention span and are results-oriented, being the party of no won’t cut it this time.

Maybe the NRSC is trying to get a candidate before anyone figures this out?

What about personal responsibility, Scott Suder?

State Rep. Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford) is “outraged” by a convict out on early release re-offending. I’m outraged by another hypocritical act from a so-called conservative Republican.

Tragedy of the crime aside (man hits jogger while on heroin), Suder asserts that the offender, Thomas Brinkman, should not have been eligible for early release because;

“Brinkman was a member of a drug ring that was responsible for eleven over-doses including five that ended in fatality. Despite his violent past, the DOC classified Brinkman as “non-violent” making him eligible for early release.”

Selling someone a drug that can kill them is not an act of violence. Buying drugs is a choice, as is selling drugs and consuming drugs. Brinkman didn’t kill the people that overdosed.

From one perspective, the law is on Suder’s side. The Len Bias provision of the federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 allows drug dealers to be prosecuted if a customer overdoses. However, if Brinkman was eligible for early release, that law does not classify him as violent.

Conservatives preaching limited government and personal responsibility, while taking these ridiculous anti-drug stances are hypocrites. Not to mention Suder certainly does not support raising taxes to keep offenders like Brinkman locked up.

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Apologies for lack of further research re: Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Time is not on my side at the moment.

Scott Fitzgerald’s number one priority is funny…kind of

Madison talk show host (and ex-gubernatorial candidate) Dan Potacke has this take on Wisconsin’s legislative leaders and their stated priorities for the next session;

Funny can be sad, too.

At his election night victory party, once-and-future Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald declared voter ID a priority, first and foremost. Assembly leader Jeff thought a jobs package deserved the lead-off slot, but big brother Fitzgerald, after winning his seat with 70% of the vote, was most concerned with voter fraud.

That bleeds irony.

At best, voter ID is a solution in search of a problem. Allegations of voter fraud are rare. When “fraud” is proven, many instances are felons still on probation or parole, performing what we teach schoolchildren is a civic responsibility.

At worst, voter ID is one of many GOP attempts to suppress traditionally Democratic voters. Make voting a little harder and these ignorant, lazy, minority Dem voters just won’t bother. Or so the thinking goes.

In reality, the GOP base isn’t any smarter. Based on conversations with a few clerks, when the Republican Governors Association sent out mailers trying to encourage early absentee voting for Scott Walker and crew, municipal offices were inundated with uninformed Republican voters wanting to register, not sure if they were registered, or demanding to register without anything more than the RGA mailer as “proof” of residence.

As voter fraud isn’t a problem anyway, “limited government” Republicans should not add more legislation, increase the burden on local clerks and disenfranchise eligible voters of both parties by adding an unnecessary step to the voting process. It seems so simple.

Russ Feingold has ideas, Ron Johnson has name calling

The Feingold campaign has a new ad highlighting Senator Feingold’s votes against trade agreements that have cost American jobs, and initiatives Feingold backed to put Americans back to work.

Ron Johnson’s campaign shot back against this awful behavior with a press release calling Feingold a career politician (the GOP has a severe dearth of ideas right now, see this RPW release). Presumably the Johnson campaign is trying to take the focus off Johnson’s praise for the job-killing trade agreements he applauded as “creative destruction” last week.

As the Johnson campaign continues to fail to present any policy solutions, they are instead going after a few cases of questionable stimulus projects. A report prepared at taxpayer expense by the staffs of Senators Coburn and McCain details 100 projects performed with funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act–some wasteful, some simply a victim of a timing conflict with local businesses that eventually would have happened anyway.

Johnson’s campaign tries to do my job for me, presenting a quote from Senator Feingold on the stimulus saying “these funds must be spent wisely.” Indeed Ron, and 99% were.

Ron Johnson got the endorsement from the GOP because he’s made a lot of money manufacturing plastics. As Mr. Johnson has absolutely nothing else to run on, his campaign, assisted by the Republican Party of Wisconsin, has been reduced to “career politician” name-calling. F. Jim Sensenbrenner has been collecting paychecks as a legislator since 1968. No ideas from these jokers…

Republican Party of Wisconsin accidentaly laments politics trumping more stimulus

The Republican Party of Wisconsin should read articles before tweeting them. If they had, this Politico article about political concerns overcoming the consensus from economists for more stimulus wouldn’t have made the cut.

Reince Priebus and his crew clearly didn’t make it past the headline of “Politics trumps economics on deficit” before sensing an opportunity to take a shot at President Obama.

The author wasn’t supportive of Obama’s economic policy, the WISGOP got that part right. What clashes with the RPW’s thoughtless talking points was the author was lamenting the influence of political concerns getting in the way of more stimulus.

The RPW seized on a few lines in the piece on the tea party “scaring the bejesus out of politicians” and bailouts being “massively unpopular.” If the reader had made it to the second page they would see the author decrying austerity measures, claiming “many economists see a real danger of the world slipping into a double-dip recession.”

The article ends;

“Congress is now opting to shred the safety net for millions of unemployed Americans…Why are they doing this? Not because of economic necessity. Because of political fear.”

But maybe the WISGOP crew didn’t err in posting the article. Before the line above, the author discusses what happened when Franklin Roosevelt cut spending just when the country started coming out of the Great Depression, and unemployment went from 5 million to 12 million;

“Going into the 1938 election, Republicans held 88 House seats. They gained 81 more.”

That would be the Republican Party of Wisconsin I know. Willing to put the outcome of the next election above the jobs and prosperity of citizens.

Ron Johnson accused of GOP convention voter fraud

Terrence Wall has apparently told WTDY, a Madison talk radio station, that one GOP convention-goer admitted Ron Johnson (or his “people”) paid for a hotel room in exchange for an endorsement vote.

Terrence Wall may be a sore loser, but I don’t imagine him lying at this point. Although he could be trying to save face after the RPW endorsed an opponent who had been in the race only weeks, compared to Wall’s roughly nine months.

This rooms-for-votes scandal can only lead to further questions of the RPW’s wisdom endorsing a candidate they knew almost nothing about beyond the single most important attribute for a GOP candidate — he is rich. How rich? We can’t be sure exactly…he still hasn’t filed his required personal financial disclosure, originally due May 15th.

If it was Johson’s “people” and not Ron Johnson himself behind the alleged incident, what should we expect from a campaign that includes Darrin Schmitz, the man behind the most highly offensive and deliberately misleading ad in Wisconsin’s political history?

Check out Blogging Blue for more, Zach Greg beat me to this one. (Had to clear that up in case I’m on the CRG watchlist. No more drama guys.)

Terrence Wall officially drops out of Senate race, offers no endorsement

With this statement Terrence Wall officially dropped out of the GOP Senate race.

Notably absent from the statement is a mention (much less an endorsement) of any of his primary opponents.

Meanwhile with this press release the Republican Party of Wisconsin is oblivious to what looks more and more like the party handpicking its Senate candidate for the fall. You know, the thing they attacked the DPW for doing in the 7th congressional district?

Get the facts on Kagan straight, Reince

RPW Chair and lead stuntman Reince Priebus responded to the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan with a typical devoid-of-fact statement. If old wisgop.org links actually worked, the cookie-cutter introduction of “strictly interpret the Constitution instead of legislating from the bench” is probably in the response to Justice Sotomayor’s nomination. Anyway, of course the GOP wants a nominee that strictly interprets the constitution, you know, the John Roberts type, the kind of fellow that would never overturn a centuries worth of precedent to say, allow corporate campaign contributions. Right?

But on to that joker Priebus. When he declares Kagan’s “opposition to allowing military recruiters on the Harvard Law School campus” he neglects that in her official capacity, the most action she took against recruiters was to deny the use of Harvard’s Office of Career Services for a brief period. The recruiters were still welcome on campus, and Kagan has been very supportive of young people serving their country.

If any groups have lacked support for service to country in the armed forces, it has been the military (including the Commander in Chief) and Congress, unwilling to abolish Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The policy has resulted in thousands of discharges, and untold numbers of potential recruits passing up the military as a career. Kagan taking a stance (as a dean, not a judge) to call attention to a discriminatory policy that’s bad for America is in no way a blemish on her record.

If you wanted more stuntman in this post, Priebus also does some assumption-based whining in other recent press releases. Read critically.