February 5, 2016 at 4:44 p.m.
Shame, Shame, Shame
Shame, Shame, Shame
Shame, Shame, Shame, the protesters yelled.
In the end, though, as we pointed out then, the shame was really on the protesters. They were defending an indefensible special-interest elite class of bureaucrats who had milked Wisconsin taxpayers almost to the fiscal end.
When they were challenged, they responded with death threats, boycotts of small businesses, thuggery, and more.
Fortunately, the citizens of Wisconsin responded by making Walker the only American governor to survive a recall election, and they bolstered Republican majorities in the Legislature. For a very brief moment, it seemed like the state was on the verge of a golden age, led by serious conservative reformers and liberty-loving leaders.
Well, snuff out that pipe dream, and watch the smoke dissipate. Unfortunately, it was the Republican leadership blowing the smoke, and all we've been doing is inhaling second-hand spin. In reality, this leadership had no intention of changing anything
Suddenly, right after the recall elections, instead of real reforms - serious tax cutting, whittling down the bureaucracies, rewriting civil service protections - big-government Republicans returned with a vengeance.
Worse still, the big-government guys turned out to be the people we thought were conservatives - like Walker and like his crony counterparts in the Legislature. Walker was a leader in the ruse, running for president and sounding very much like the other candidates the GOP establishment favored, you know, the ones who got about 7 percent of the vote in Iowa, with the exception of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
On the campaign trail, though, Walker couldn't make up his mind about ethanol, couldn't make up his mind about Common Core, couldn't even make up his mind about building a Canadian wall.
A Canadian wall!
Meanwhile, back home, the Republicans were busy cutting taxes without cutting spending - that's an impressive present they will leave to our grandchildren - while crony capitalists over at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation were all but looting the treasury with misguided and unaccountable subsidies, loans, and who knows what else.
The very mission of the WEDC is to distort markets by picking winners and losers, and so its existence is a testament to Walker's cronyism, and one of his biggest special-interest legacies.
At least all this was traditional big-government Republicanism. Unlike the Democrats, who want to control every breath we take and who desire to regulate us into submission, the big-government Republicans are pretty much hands off, so long as we leave them alone with our money.
After all, who has time for totalitarian nonsense when there's some money to be made, or spent, and a public dole to get on.
But then, this past year, things began to turn ugly. And by that we mean real ugly.
For example, last summer the Republicans wanted to go nuclear and vaporize the state's open records laws. They're still trying, as a matter of fact. As it turns out, big-government Republicans don't like being exposed for who and what they are: Big-government Republicans.
Don't get us wrong. The Democrats don't like open records laws, either, but at least they just try to evade them individually, when they can get away it. The Republicans went global and just wanted to get rid of transparency for everybody.
Who are the globalists now?
Also this week, as we have reported, state Republican Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) announced he would push a bill to ban those serving as county executives from simultaneously serving in the Legislature. Apparently he wants to target a current Senate candidate who happens to be - yes, of course - a Democratic county executive.
How's that for transparency?
Fitzgerald says he doesn't like people double dipping -i.e., taking home a big salary for county executive and another government check from the Legislature - but really what business is it of his if voters give their OK for a candidate to do just that?
What business is it of the Republican leadership to tell Wisconsinites who they can and can't vote for, and, worse yet, to decide who can and cannot run.
It is apparent to us these days that the Republican leadership cares not about average citizens but about their political and monied interests and friends, and they aren't shy about protecting them.
Things are so bad we even suspect the dismantling of public unions wasn't about helping taxpayers so much as it was about gutting the liberals' political machinery for elections.
This Republican leadership undertakes no mission for a noble cause. That the whacking of public-sector unions happened to also be such a noble cause was surely nothing mere than a happy accident.
The self-interest of the Republican leadership of Wisconsin is the only cause, and each passing month brings fresh evidence why voters should replace them.
After Fitzgerald's latest move, on top of everything else this year, there's only one message we send to Walker, Fitzgerald, Assembly speaker Robin Vos and others in the Republican leadership:
Shame, Shame, Shame.
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