August 10, 2016 at 4:54 p.m.
Their last hurrah
Their last hurrah
If the national political fabric is blood red and blow-hard blue, Wisconsin's primary colors can best be described as 50 shades of black, that is, it lacks all color 50 times over.
There were no signs of life anywhere Tuesday.
This week, from top to bottom, there were landslides galore and few competitive races. In a year in which Scott Walker ran for president and crashed and burned, and in which the state's open-records laws came under massive attack, the voters shrugged.
Wisconsin had an election, and nobody cared.
In our area, no Republicans stood up to challenge the status quo politics of Sen. Tom Tiffany or of Reps. Rob Swearingen or Mary Czaja. Don't misunderstand us, we're not saying these officials should have been defeated or even opposed, we just think the lack of internal party challenges is interesting, given the polarizing divisions these days in the Republican Party.
It's especially interesting in the cases of Tiffany and Czaja, for they have polarized their own local constituencies. Both earned the wrath of more than a few Republicans because of their participation in the assault last summer on open government. And many Republicans on the local level were further angered by what they saw as Tiffany's attack on local control.
But no internal party challenges to either candidate ever happened. Maybe those issues just aren't critical enough to Republican voters or potential candidates.
Where there were challenges, the Republican establishment had its will and way, as did the Democratic Party establishment. Down in the first congressional district, Paul Ryan, the leader of the national GOP establishment, won 84 percent of the vote against his Trumpian challenger, who managed to attract national attention and support from the likes of Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter.
The race to replace Reid Ribble in the 8th congressional district was less glamorous but the result was the same: An establishment candidate who was a former advisor to Scott Walker - the leader of the state GOP establishment - blasted the more conservative Sen. Frank Lasee.
So, what does all this tell us?
Well, maybe it means people are just happy, but we aren't buying it. Democrats might be happy - they seem to love establishment and government authority - but everywhere we go we see discontent in the Republican grassroots just like there is in the rest of the country.
It just hasn't found a voice in the ballot box here, and it certainly did not do so this past week.
Again, though, that's not to say people are happy. More likely it's because the establishments of the two major parties have a stranglehold on Wisconsin politics, and have had for decades. When it comes to the GOP especially, this is a bona fide establishment state - the South Carolina of the North.
That showed when Wisconsin proved to be an outlier in the GOP presidential primary. Back then, Ted Cruz's victory was at first taken as a sign the national GOP race was about to turn from Trump; instead, it turned out to be the establishment's last hurrah. There are very few places where conservative talk radio is powered by establishment Republicans, but southern Wisconsin is one of them, its shows populated by the pro-Walker and pro-crony capitalist set.
That they are indeed popular and represent the majority of the party was demonstrated again this week, as it was in April.
Still, our guess is that, despite its strength, the Wisconsin GOP establishment's day of reckoning will come inevitably, as it did elsewhere in this year's Republican primaries. Important elections are looming, and discontent rising, and sooner or later the two will collide at the intersection of Frustration and Anger, and at the corners of Corruption and Recession.
Could it happen in the 2018 gubernatorial election? Perhaps, but sooner or later the revolt against the establishments of both parties will penetrate Wisconsin's borders. It will have to if our state is to survive economically.
So, when assessing this week's quiet primaries, it's best not to view them as either an endorsement of the status quo, or surrender to it.
No, it's best pondered as the calm before the storm, the state establishment's last hurrah.
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