This one’s going to be rambling, partly because I’m out of practice, partly because I still feel like death warmed over, and partly because I’m still loopy from election-induced sleep deprivation. I also promise words that are not going to be safe for work. Most of my thoughts over the last 24 hours have been scattered across the ether, so it’s time to collate them in one place.
On August 1, the signs declaring Wisconsin The Kingdom of Dane closed to business on order of the Wisconsin Kingdom of Dane Supreme Court will go up as Joanne Kloppenburg will join and create a freshly-minted liberal majority. That will put an end to any further action by the still-sitting-for-now Republican majority in the Legislature and Governor Scott Walker, which were already stopped by the opening move by the Democrat Party of Dane County (which is the DPW and has been since 2002) to invalidate and (at least in the hopes of the Left) ultimately prematurely reverse their elections.
I’ve seen the movie of those who at least claim to be right of center showing up for one election and one election only, thinking the job is done, before. Indeed, I lived through the prequel, which featured the same leading politician, Scott Walker. Back in 2002, after an unconscionable 2000-era pension grab by the Milwaukee County politicians in power was discovered, we tossed out the county executive and replaced him with Walker. The bad news – we thought we were essentially done with that and failed to replace more than 6 of the 25 board supervisors with people who would vote to implement the changes Walker wanted. Ultimately, Walker was left with only 3 reliable votes of 19 on the board once it was resized and two election cycles happened.
Fast-forward to the present. While we gave Walker a Legislature who would not be, at the end of the day, a roadblock, we forgot to make sure that the Democrats could simply run away to stall things. Worse, when push came to shove, we once again forgot that the Left considers the judiciary, and especially the Supreme Court, THE END-ALL, and that this particular election could (and ultimately did) give them the launching point to return state government to the state which they see it: of the lawyers, by the Democrats, for the unions.
Looking over the county-by-county numbers, there is a serious warning light flashing at Sean Duffy. For all the focus, and rightly-so, on how it was Dane County that led the charge, the lowest drop-offs from Tom Barrett’s vote totals in November to Kloppenburg’s, and the highest from Scott Walker’s to David Prosser’s, happened not in Dane County or even in its geographical “sphere of influence”, but in northwest Wisconsin.
By the same token, the Fox Valley proved that their one-time infatuation with Steve Kagen was an abberation. Yes, I know Prosser is from Outagamie County, but the surrounding counties also had, on a percentage basis, more liberal dropoff than conservative drop-off.
For those who want to blame Walker, or the Brothers Fitzgerald for losing the messaging war, fuck you. No, FUCK YOU! Where the fuck were we (and yes, I include myself because I didn’t do long-form post after long-form post after long-form post) when Walker’s office released a week-long series of press releases detailing outrageous exploitations of the collective bargaining system that was dutifully ignored by the legacy press? Where the fuck were we when the Greater Wisconsin Committee threw the utility sink at Prosser? If there’s one thing we should have learned in the age of New Media, it is that WE are the messengers.
For those of you who want to blame the fact that the Brothers Fitzgerald never really did move on voter ID, much less as the first thing, or for moving on collective bargaining, once again, fuck you. Instead of the Left using collective bargaining as their rallying cry, they would have unleashed the same fucking tactics against voter ID with, as far as yesterday is concerned, more success. Indeed, any action on any idea on our agenda, or even inaction would have been used as their “spark”.
Even though the war, at least for the next 4 years, is lost, there are “skirmishes” (battles, really, even though only four people matter in the Kingdom of Dane and these skirmishes will be duly ignored by them) to be won in preparation for the next war – the 2015 Supreme Court race and the liberation of Wisconsin. That it took both the utility sink and a brain-fart-induced apathy for the Left to hit parity is at least somewhat encouraging, even in Wisconsin. It is especially encouraging for those in other states; the lesson of the day is to keep up the skeer because the Left never gives up.
