A recent AP release brought to my attention the "Cheesehead revolution." Until this blurb, I never heard of it.
Apparently, this "Cheesehead revolution" was the brain child of our right-wing Gov. Walker and the hapless GOP national chair, Reince Priebus. Thanks to the rise of the tea party Republicans and their sweep of the 2010 election, newly-elected Walker was anointed a rising GOP star. Wisconsin native Priebus took over as national chair of the GOP. Add Paul Ryan as "Tin Ear" Romney's running mate for the 2012 presidential election, and we had three Republican "heavyweights" right here in the Badger State.
Wow. A "Cheesehead revolution," as dubbed by Walker and Priebus, leading a unified GOP, no less. What could go wrong with that?
It started downhill with Romney and Ryan getting soundly whipped by President Obama in 2012. Well, heck, just a minor setback. Leave it to Priebus to fix it. So in 2013, he issues his report, the "Growth and Opportunity Project," aimed toward immigration overhaul and outreach to minorities, driven by recognition that Hispanics in particular were a rising portion of the population.
Whatta farce. Instead of reaching out to Hispanics and broadening the party's base, current leading GOP presidential candidates are appealing to more conservative white voters while dissing Hispanics and other minorities. That report clearly put Priebus at odds with more conservative Republicans. Iowa's Republican Congressman King asserted that the Priebus report "has been haunting the Republican Party" ever since its release. "It's awfully hard to recover from something like that," he added.
So much for broadening the base of the Republican Party.
And the second member of this Cheesehead troika, Gov. Walker? With the aid of his obsequious lackeys in our gerrymandered Republican legislature, he used his "divide and conquer" strategy to break the unions, create a tough voter ID law, and a long list of other mischief, topped off by a ham-handed attempt to remove the "search for truth" from University of Wisconsin's statutorily embedded mission statement.
So with a fat campaign chest, Walker hits the presidential campaign trail. Exposed to the glaring public spotlight, he impresses no one. Add hubris and incompetent financial management, and he blows his fat campaign chest. His financiers have already seen enough. His money dries up and he drops like a rock.
And the third member of this troika, Ryan? He has actually ascended in power, to the House Speakership. He denied that he wanted it. Unsurprisingly, he accepted it anyway.
If I can interject a personal note, when I was running for the Assembly in 2008, I met Ryan over in Janesville at the Rock County Fair. Before being gerrymandered and carved up, this district included a portion of Rock County. When I was in Janesville that day, Ryan came over to the Democratic tent and introduced himself to all of us. I found him to be warm and personable, very likable as an individual.
That's nice, of course, but makes him potentially dangerous. Speaker Ryan wants to turn Medicare into a voucher program, essentially "destroying it in order to save it." Ryan is hailed as an intelligent policy wonk, but that doesn't equate with good policy. He is intelligent enough to assure us that his "reformed" Medicare voucher plan would include only those citizens aged 55 and under, taking advantage of the illusion of the young and healthy that they will always remain that way. The vast majority of those now on, or about to go on Medicare, don't want it to be changed - Ryan knows that.
This brings us to the present. The phantom "Cheesehead revolution" concocted by Walker and Priebus is long gone, if it had ever existed as more than a figment of imagination of dreamers in la la land. The nitwits of the media attribute death of the dream to Donald Trump. Nonsense.
This is just another example of lazy, sloppy reporting, and absence of thought. Republicans have welcomed the tea partiers, have obstructed the president in every possible way, and have been playing the race card since the Southern Strategy of the 60s. Many Republican senators and congressmen face greater risk of challenge from the conservative right than from Democrats. The chickens have come home to roost. Trump is result, not cause.
So the two candidates leading the GOP field, Trump and Ted Cruz, are the very two that GOP establishment kingpin and master strategist, Karl Rove, and his minions least wanted. GOP Convention Rule 40(b), earlier instituted to protect Romney, states that to be nominated, a candidate must have won at least eight states. This leaves it to Cruz and Trump, with a panicked GOP establishment trying to figure out how to nominate someone more electable, and who will follow orders, er, the script.
Fear not - Priebus is still holding the toy steering wheel, pretending he's driving the bus.
When interviewed by Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press," he nervously assured us that rule 40(b) was not "set in stone." Ostensibly, it could be changed to allow nomination of those who have not won eight states, like John Kasich or Ryan.
Predictably, Todd failed to press Priebus. If Cruz and Trump have the majority of delegates going into the convention, they presumably would be represented on the Rules Committee. Even if a rule to open up nominations were floated before the convention, why would the Cruz and Trump delegates, surely a collective majority, agree to a rule that would open it up to Kasich or Ryan?
Ryan says he's not seeking the nomination. Even if nominated, his election would be an uphill battle as there would surely be a vicious backlash among Trump and Cruz delegates and voters.
So maybe this time, when Ryan says "no" he means "no." Then again, maybe not.
And so much for the phantom "Cheesehead revolution."
- John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Fridays in The Monroe Times.
Apparently, this "Cheesehead revolution" was the brain child of our right-wing Gov. Walker and the hapless GOP national chair, Reince Priebus. Thanks to the rise of the tea party Republicans and their sweep of the 2010 election, newly-elected Walker was anointed a rising GOP star. Wisconsin native Priebus took over as national chair of the GOP. Add Paul Ryan as "Tin Ear" Romney's running mate for the 2012 presidential election, and we had three Republican "heavyweights" right here in the Badger State.
Wow. A "Cheesehead revolution," as dubbed by Walker and Priebus, leading a unified GOP, no less. What could go wrong with that?
It started downhill with Romney and Ryan getting soundly whipped by President Obama in 2012. Well, heck, just a minor setback. Leave it to Priebus to fix it. So in 2013, he issues his report, the "Growth and Opportunity Project," aimed toward immigration overhaul and outreach to minorities, driven by recognition that Hispanics in particular were a rising portion of the population.
Whatta farce. Instead of reaching out to Hispanics and broadening the party's base, current leading GOP presidential candidates are appealing to more conservative white voters while dissing Hispanics and other minorities. That report clearly put Priebus at odds with more conservative Republicans. Iowa's Republican Congressman King asserted that the Priebus report "has been haunting the Republican Party" ever since its release. "It's awfully hard to recover from something like that," he added.
So much for broadening the base of the Republican Party.
And the second member of this Cheesehead troika, Gov. Walker? With the aid of his obsequious lackeys in our gerrymandered Republican legislature, he used his "divide and conquer" strategy to break the unions, create a tough voter ID law, and a long list of other mischief, topped off by a ham-handed attempt to remove the "search for truth" from University of Wisconsin's statutorily embedded mission statement.
So with a fat campaign chest, Walker hits the presidential campaign trail. Exposed to the glaring public spotlight, he impresses no one. Add hubris and incompetent financial management, and he blows his fat campaign chest. His financiers have already seen enough. His money dries up and he drops like a rock.
And the third member of this troika, Ryan? He has actually ascended in power, to the House Speakership. He denied that he wanted it. Unsurprisingly, he accepted it anyway.
If I can interject a personal note, when I was running for the Assembly in 2008, I met Ryan over in Janesville at the Rock County Fair. Before being gerrymandered and carved up, this district included a portion of Rock County. When I was in Janesville that day, Ryan came over to the Democratic tent and introduced himself to all of us. I found him to be warm and personable, very likable as an individual.
That's nice, of course, but makes him potentially dangerous. Speaker Ryan wants to turn Medicare into a voucher program, essentially "destroying it in order to save it." Ryan is hailed as an intelligent policy wonk, but that doesn't equate with good policy. He is intelligent enough to assure us that his "reformed" Medicare voucher plan would include only those citizens aged 55 and under, taking advantage of the illusion of the young and healthy that they will always remain that way. The vast majority of those now on, or about to go on Medicare, don't want it to be changed - Ryan knows that.
This brings us to the present. The phantom "Cheesehead revolution" concocted by Walker and Priebus is long gone, if it had ever existed as more than a figment of imagination of dreamers in la la land. The nitwits of the media attribute death of the dream to Donald Trump. Nonsense.
This is just another example of lazy, sloppy reporting, and absence of thought. Republicans have welcomed the tea partiers, have obstructed the president in every possible way, and have been playing the race card since the Southern Strategy of the 60s. Many Republican senators and congressmen face greater risk of challenge from the conservative right than from Democrats. The chickens have come home to roost. Trump is result, not cause.
So the two candidates leading the GOP field, Trump and Ted Cruz, are the very two that GOP establishment kingpin and master strategist, Karl Rove, and his minions least wanted. GOP Convention Rule 40(b), earlier instituted to protect Romney, states that to be nominated, a candidate must have won at least eight states. This leaves it to Cruz and Trump, with a panicked GOP establishment trying to figure out how to nominate someone more electable, and who will follow orders, er, the script.
Fear not - Priebus is still holding the toy steering wheel, pretending he's driving the bus.
When interviewed by Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press," he nervously assured us that rule 40(b) was not "set in stone." Ostensibly, it could be changed to allow nomination of those who have not won eight states, like John Kasich or Ryan.
Predictably, Todd failed to press Priebus. If Cruz and Trump have the majority of delegates going into the convention, they presumably would be represented on the Rules Committee. Even if a rule to open up nominations were floated before the convention, why would the Cruz and Trump delegates, surely a collective majority, agree to a rule that would open it up to Kasich or Ryan?
Ryan says he's not seeking the nomination. Even if nominated, his election would be an uphill battle as there would surely be a vicious backlash among Trump and Cruz delegates and voters.
So maybe this time, when Ryan says "no" he means "no." Then again, maybe not.
And so much for the phantom "Cheesehead revolution."
- John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Fridays in The Monroe Times.
