The Tea Party Turns on Ron Johnson

Looks like the fallout from Ron Johnson's "vetting session" is only just beginning.

There's a long post at RedState.com examining Johnson's interview and it is as scathing as it is paranoid. Here's a sample:

Johnson started out with a full eight and a half minutes of personal introduction. Less then two minutes in, he says something that might seem completely innocuous to anyone not paying close attention: “I realize I just received the endorsement from the Republican Party. I will say I was as surprised as anybody about that. But I do want to say that I view that more as an endorsement of my message.”

Why does this little snippet raise my eyebrow? Two reasons.

On Wednesday, May 26^th, just days after the state GOP convention had concluded, the Wisconsin State Journal published an article on the party’s [use skeptical tone here] “surprise” endorsement of Johnson. Near the end, Reince Priebus, Chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, asserts: “It doesn’t matter if you’re in the race for two years or two months. This proves it’s about the right message and the right candidate.”

It sounds suspiciously like Priebus and Johnson are repeating talking points.

Wow ... nothing gets by these guys. Obviously, there's something fishy going on instead of, you know, a couple of people just saying a whole lot of nothing (which is exactly what the above talking point is).

And it only gets worse. The blogger starts derisively calling Johnson "RoJo" and seems oddly obsessed with politics over policy:

Unfortunately, RoJo didn’t even touch the answer to the question actually posed. He didn’t talk about strategy. He didn’t say a thing about how he’s going to win the confidence of independents, who have historically voted for Feingold. He didn’t broach how he might capture disillusioned Democrats. He didn’t hint at how he’s going to counteract the rich white guy image that Russ is bound to leverage against him. He didn’t mention where, how, or why he’d attack Feingold’s record.

Yeah, like the campaign is going to make that information public ... Note the bolded line above. A little later on in the blogger's post we get his recap of Johnson's opinion on the role of government:

“But also, I’m not reflexively anti-government…I want the government to have smart and effective regulation to make sure the free market continues to operate properly. I don’t want to see large companies with monopolistic practices. I think we should invoke anti-trust regulation so that— If there’s ever a business that’s termed too big to fail, regulation has already failed. We shouldn’t allow businesses to accumulate each other and merge to the point where they get too large to fail.”

Uh oh…

Let me get this straight: Ron Johnson, entrepreneur and millionaire, wants someone else to tell him when his company’s gotten too big? He’d really appreciate it if the government told him he couldn’t buy another company in order to expand or innovate? Or is it that—like so many in Washington—RoJo thinks those kinds of rules wouldn’t apply to him?

Ronny sounds suspiciously like a progressive—not a conservative.

This is, of course, an absolutely idiotic thing to say.

Johnson's opinion sounds perfectly reasonable. In fact, it seems like just the kind of statement that would, I don't know, win the confidence of independents, who have historically voted for Feingold ... and yet "Pompadour" dismisses the sentiment out of hand because Johnson does not appear to be an anarcho-capitalist. Good luck with that ...

That's really just the beginning of the post, which is in itself the first of at lest two parts (more promised tomorrow). The whole thing is an epic example of just how unreliable the Tea Party is.

There is no pleasing these folks. They have no interest in doing the work and making the necessary compromises needed to win elections. You're either 100% with them or against them. Why anyone takes them seriously is beyond me.