The Weakest Analysis of the Budget Vote You're Going to Find

And the winner is ...

Jessica McBride, ladies and gentlemen!

Ms. McBride supplies her dutiful readers with this map:

Now, the dots represent the home towns of the members of the Republican caucus who voted Yes on the budget. As Ms. McBride explains, the reason these folks voted the way they did is because -- I shit you not -- "They are largely not in Talk Radio Country."

Pardon me?

I've been to Green Bay, they have talk radio there. Same deal in Fond du Lac. I've actually never been to La Crosse, but I've heard lovely things and would have imagine that they have harnessed the awesome power of the transistor radio on the shores of the mighty Mississippi ...

What Ms. McBride is trying to say is that all of the members of the Republican caucus who voted for the budget are not from Southeastern Wisconsin, because we all know that suburban Milwaukee and environs is the center of the known universe.

Please ... you call that analysis?

Don't feed people this self-important bullshit about not being in earshot of talk radio. If a constituent wants something done they can cut out the middle man and call their representative's office directly -- talk radio is hardly the conduit to power in Wisconsin AM radio would have you believe. The only thing talk radio has the ability to do is to have talk show hosts whip their audiences into a berserker frenzy.

The Republicans who voted for the budget did so for the same reasons any opposition party member would vote for similar legislation: they were part of the leadership crew that negotiated the thing in the first place (hence the red dot in West Salem) or they got some goodies stuffed in the package (Oregon in the house!).

So, please, Ms. McBride: kindly do us all a favor and get out of Cartography 101 before the drop date. I hear there are some openings in a few of the Intro to Political Science classes still available.