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Saturday, May 16, 2015

Mussolini in Iowa

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5 comments:

Siarlys Jenkins said...

Yeah, Scott Walker has been seen in Iowa a lot lately.

May 16, 2015 at 6:45 PM
Gary Fouse said...

Fools usually don't win.

May 18, 2015 at 8:38 AM
Siarlys Jenkins said...

I've told you this before elwood... Scott Walker got where he is today courtesy of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin -- who are indeed a pack of fools.

(I'm not a liberal -- remember? I blame liberals for the fact that Republicans can win elections.)

Walker is an overgrown spoiled brat and a snake oil salesman, but Democratic campaign strategists don't trust the voters with such a straightforward messages. They have to concoct arcane TV spots about right wing reactionaries, or ugly old women asking who Walker thinks he is?

Walker kept taxes down as Milwaukee County executive by the simple strategem of deferring essential maintenance, leaving to his successor to deal with the pain. To vary a common theme, if a homeowner maintained their house the way Walker ran the county, they'd be bankrupt, foreclosed, and facing a pile of violations from city inspectors. But Democrats don't know how to say that. They'd rather talk about whether two men, or two women, constitute a marriage.

Walker expected to run against tired old incumbent Jim Doyle, who had alienated a good deal of organized labor and a lot of swing voters with absolutely idiotic vetoes. Doyle prudently stepped aside.

Walker didn't run on "I'm going to do to the unions what Gary Fouse and the Right To Work For Less Committee have dreamed of in their wildest fantasies." He ran a bland campaign as the fresh young face, promising vaguely to create 250,000 new jobs and chatting about how he took his lunch to work in a brown paper bag.

So the Democrats ran the tiredest, oldest politician they had against him -- addicted to "name recognition." Predictably, Tom Barrett lost.

The Democrats got an unprecedented second bite at the apple, no thanks to themselves, but a grassroots movement got petitions signed by about half the voters in the state to recall Walker.

The Democrats put forward Tom Barrett as "the only candidate who can beat Scott Walker." (Try, the only candidate who ever lost a statewide race to Scott Walker). Predictably, people looked at getting a re-run of Walker vs. Barrett, held their nose, and voted for Walker.

Now if we had a recall law like California, Walker would have been out on his ear. It would have been

1) Shall Scott Walker be recalled?

2) If a majority of voters support the recall, which of the following candidates shall replace him as governor?

That's the way to do a recall.

Third time around... the Dems state chair, who should have fallen on his sword in shame after muffing the recall, hand-picks a reasonably competent business woman to run for governor. She turns out to be a nice lady who was out of her depth. If they had any sense, they would have run the guy who ran for lieutenant governor in the recall, Mahlon Mitchell, and let him design his own campaign, because when he's not surrounded by handlers and spin doctors, he talks plain and makes sense. But party leaders don't think white voters outside Milwaukee will vote for a man of visible African descent -- never mind that Republicans in Milwaukee nearly nominated a black businessman for congress in 2004.

Get my drift? If we didn't have a rigged two-party system, the Dems and the GOPs would both be out on their ear.

Gary is right though -- fools usually don't win. (Not unless their daddy's rich friends think a cute fool with a famous name is just the shill they need to run the country into the ground and enrich them all in the process... anyone remember GWB?)

May 20, 2015 at 7:47 PM
elwood p suggins said...

Dang, touched a nerve, didn't I??

Siarlys--you have told me MANY things on MANY occasions, but I don't know for sure that I know yet what you are. For that matter, I am not completely convinced that YOU even know what you are.

May 21, 2015 at 8:40 AM
Siarlys Jenkins said...

Touched a nerve? elwood, I am prepared to run my mouth for any number of hours on any subject if someone just gives me the opportunity. Haven't you noticed?

I'd rather be telling the Democratic Party leadership, but they haven't asked me, and you did.

I do try to live outside the box. I'm ruthlessly opposed to the "equal protection" argument for same sex marriage, but I could care less if the legislature of any state votes to establish such a thing. Cosmically speaking, it would be a legal fiction, but legal fictions are perfectly serviceable for all practical purposes. (Click on my name above, if you want to know more about that.)

Generally I define myself as politically libertarian, economically conservative, and culturally conservative. Roe v. Wade was a sound, conservative application of well established precedent to a set of facts not previously submitted to the court.

May 23, 2015 at 8:24 PM

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