How this Whole Election has Secretly been about Health Care Reform the Entire Time

Measuring "news cycles" is kind of a tricky business, largely because it's a pretty arbitrary exercise. We're constantly told that we live in a "24 hour news cycle" world, but if Mitt Romney's 11:00 PM press conference last night reminds us of anything it's that there are countless smaller epicycles within each news cycle which work symbiotically to power the revolutions around which human events turn.

But that's a rather poetic way of looking at news cycles. Let's face it: they exist so that others may use them to keep score. One thing that I've been constantly astonished by during this Presidential election is just how lop-sided the "news cycle contest" has been in favor of the President. I'm sure there are myriad reasons as to why this is that range from experience professionals on Obama's press team to dumb luck, but there also seems to be a singular moment in this campaign, one that's largely been overlooked since, that seems to have instigated a long string of news cycle "wins" for Obama.

So we decided to add up news cycles to help prove our point. This is hardly a scientifically sound, but one that suited our purposed. We decided to look at what we considered the largest evaluate-able "news cycles" to see who won each the over the course of the last six months or so. For these purposes we chose cycles that lasted a week in length.

It's kinda amusing to think about the state of the Presidential race as it existed three months ago. June was not a particularly good month for the Obama campaign. First, Scott Walker defeated his recall effort, an event that many claimed foretold bad news for Obama. This was followed by a series of ill-fated marketing and fund-raising gimmicks that seemed to fall flat. Then came the news that the rather substantial lead Obama had enjoyed over Romney had all but evaporated. Jobs and other assorted economic figures were not improving. Making matters worse was the fact that Romney was breaking all kinds of fund-raising records. Dems -- ever the electoral fatalists -- weren't quite pushing the panic button, but they definitely had their hands hovering over it.

If fact, the entire spring season had not gone particularly well for Chicago. As the campaign prepped for it's launch in April it seemed to have a hard time finding it's bearings. It was accused of being too dependent on celebrity money, a clumsy roll out of an ad touting the death of bin Laden, and seemed to get pinned with the blame after a confusing gaffe involving someone who really wasn't even involved with the campaign. The pre-kick-off was spotty enough to warrant some justifiable trash talk from Team Romney. Things did not get much better in May. There were outreach efforts that failed to connect, mixed messages from surrogates and perhaps a sense of listlessness and/or purposelessness.

In contrast, Team Romney seemed to have a much easier time transitioning from a primary to a general election campaign, and with the exception of a uncomfortable bullying story from Romney's youth, seemed buoyed by the prospect that what once looked like a suicide mission now looked like a potential path to the White House. To be sure, Boston also had its share of struggles, but for a lot of people there seemed to be little doubt that Romney "wanted it more."

That whole dynamic, however, changed literally overnight. On Thursday, June 28th the Supreme Court ruled to uphold Obamacare with Bush-appointed conservative Chief Justice John Roberts authoring the decision. The consensus among Court-watchers, at least since the oral arguments for the case in March, was that this was not going to happen. But it did, and really has come serve as the giant pivot point around which this election has turned. In the three months since the decision, Romney has lost news cycle after news cycle. It's actually worth going through a week by week tick-tock of the summer just to get a grasp of the magnitude of this devastating period for Romney.

June 29-July 8th

Health Care decision dominates discussion during the weekend following the announcement and of the following week as the Fourth of July holiday fell midweek.

July 9th-15th

Romney deals with questions about how long he worked at Bain Capital. This leads to questions about Bain outsourcing jobs, the validity of certain SEC filings and the virtue of keeping money in off-shore bank accounts -- all of which rather skillfully paint an unflattering portrait of Romney and lead up to the inevitable questions about...

July 16th-22nd

Romney's taxes. Mitt refuses to release his IRS filings to howls of just about everyone on both sides of the spectrum. By this time we start seeing articles titled "Mitt Romney's Painfully Bad Week" and "Mitt Romney's Long Hot Summer."

July 23rd-29th

Foreign Policy Fiasco week. Given how stunning Romney's first day in London was, it's easy to forget that the missteps started days before he even boarded his plane to Heathrow. First, he rather inartfully used the words of the Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr to bolster a point he made at a fund-raiser; a mistake Romney could have avoided had he known Carr is a member of Australia's Labor Party and not an ideological bedfellow of the American Right. Then came an adviser's ill-advised "anglo-saxon heritage" comment. This was followed by an excruciatingly painful tour of London, which involved a minor kerfuffle over the hosts of a fund-raiser. Romney arrived in Israel to a minor controversy over allowing the press into a -- wait for it! -- high-dollar fund-raiser, during which he mused haphazardly on the nature of Palestinian culture ... and was latter rebuked for his comments by the very source from whence he claimed they came.

July 30th - August 5th

Romney closed out his European tour with a press aide losing his cool at reporters, only to return home to find Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accusing him of not paying taxes for 10 years, reigniting a debate that had gone dormant only while commentators gawked at Romney awkwardness abroad. Reid's remarks conveniently occurred right around the same time think tanks and news outlets started giving Romney's tax policy some serious scrutiny and finding his positions wanting. While Romney was busy tending to the ongoing issue of his personal taxes, the Obama campaign had women all to themselves. Most of the positive press coverage of Romney revolved around his impending running mate selection.

August 6th-12th

The VP selection speculation continues through the next week while Dems continue to bring up the matter of Romney's personal taxes. Boston's plan appears to be just to ignore the calls for him to release his filings. Obama's campaign keeps appealing to women. Team Romney declines to fight back, but decides to change the topic to a brazenly untruthful attack on Obama's record on welfare reform, a crass strategy whose shameless appeal to the worst elements of the GOP base escapes no one. The effort is so ham-handed that it begins to cause Romney serious credibility problems. The only saving grace that this period allow Romney is his selection of Paul Ryan to be his running mate late on Friday, August 10th. The weekend is full of mostly soft and positive "getting to know you" press surrounding the decision, and most reporters seem to forget about Romney's taxes.

August 13th-19th

Romney is praised on the right for the Ryan pick, and numerous pundits on the left hope for a "serious" policy debate. As if to make these very hopes flesh, Romney speaks to a crowd at a rally on the 16th with the help of a white board. It doesn't work. But it's at this rally that Romney just can't seem to help himself and he announces that he looked through his records and hasn't paid lower than 13% each year for the last decade, thus reviving the issue of his tax returns which most of the media had gotten over in the wake of Paul Ryan joining the ticket. It's a moment that does a great deal to negate much of the good will Romney had earned from the Ryan pick. The next day, Chicago reaches out to make a "deal" with Romney, explaining that they'll be cool if he only releases 5 years worth of tax returns. Romney refuses. The issue persists. By the 19th, Team Romney has decided it will finally start talking about Mitt's faith and plans to put the matter front and center during the upcoming convention to combat growing "likeability" concerns.

August 20th-26th

The first part of the week is dominated by MO-Sen candidate Todd Akin's idiotic remarks on rape. Team Romney asks Akin to stand down, but is mostly overshadowed by the ensuing debate as only a few people bring up Mitt's alternating views on the topic. In a rare bit of good news, Romney announces a great summer of fund-raising and Dems start to worry about Obama's burn rate. But the Akin issue persists and rather than continue to sit on the sideline, Romney once again tries to change the conversation and spends a day talking about energy policy, but not without making a relatively small gaffe. As luck would have it, the conversation does change, but not how Romney envisioned it would, when Gawker posts a large dump of internal Bain files that ultimately don't yield much new information, but still arrive with a thud loud enough that Romney finally responds in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal after seven weeks of being attacked on Bain.

Romney's article may have put out one fire, but later that day (August 24th) he started another one while delivering an otherwise innocuous "let me tell you about how I grew up" speech in his home state of Michigan, during which he made an errant birther joke. Later on in the day, Romney's convention speech is rescheduled amid concerns about Hurricane Isaac hitting the Tampa area.

The robust debate that Paul Ryan's presence on the ticket was supposed to bring doesn't materialize amid inconsistencies between statements Romney has made during the campaign and Ryan's voting record. Nor does the bounce the pick was supposed to bring happen. Over the course of the next few weeks, Ryan adopts Romney's policy ambiguity and evasiveness.

August 27th - September 3rd

Convention week. The Holy Mother of missed opportunities. The autopsies on the catastrophe are only now being conducted and the results appear to be total. If the goal of the RNC was to humanize Romney and elaborate for the American electorate how his policies would pull the country out of the current economic rut, it failed miserably -- both in and of itself and especially when compared to the DNC.

September 4th-9th

Team Romney is completely overshadowed by the DNC and the nostalgic warmth that followed Bill Clinton's speech.

September 10th-16th:

Romney drops the ball on the Libya embassy riots and the subsequent murder of four American diplomats with a response to the event that leaves even supporters on the right mystified at his callous tone and transparent opportunism. This leads to a number of GOP activists, old hats and at least one official to openly question the direction of the campaign in the press (what took them so long?), culminating in the ruthless Politico piece assigning a good deal of blame for the campaign's dismal performance on adviser Stuart Stevens. That Sunday afternoon blockbuster would have likely dominated the conversation this week were it not for...

September 17th-Today

The Secret Fundraiser Tape. This thing is bad news for Romney. This is exactly the kind of political voyeurism that people eat up -- a candid glimpse into an otherwise impenetrable dark, smokey room where movers and shakers share their true thoughts and feelings about those they seek power from. It's certainly a body blow, but one that could be recovered from had it been an isolated incident. Given all that we've just run through, it's obviously not, but rather yet another episode in a series of related missteps that seem to be converging at the worse of possible moments for Romney. These types of incidents hasten the rats from a sinking ship, who tend to create more trouble during their exit.

***

There. By my count Team Romney has lost the last 12 consecutive new cycles. That's almost three months of unrelenting bad news for the GOP nominee and no end in sight. It's certainly true that news cycles are weighted and that those close to Election Day are undoubtedly worth more than those further from it, but Team Romney have simply not demonstrated any evidence that they can pull out of the death spiral their campaign has become. There is simply too much inertia for them to overcome.

For Boston, that started when the Supreme Court handed down it's Obamacare decision, but what is easy to forget is that Team Obama also went through an extended rough patch earlier this year, as we mentioned at the very beginning of this post. And when did that slump begin? There's a strong case to be made for March 27th of this year. That was the second day of oral arguments at the Supreme Court and the scene of a largely derided performance by Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, one that earned him the scorn of Court-watchers everywhere (but one which may have won over Roberts in the end). Verrilli's performance was so criticized that "expert" opinion that initial believed the Court would uphold the law instantly did a U-turn and was now sure the Court would strike it down. The Obama campaign seemed to lose a lot of the wind in it's sails following oral arguments and just couldn't seem to find the mojo it had demonstrated in 2008 and for good reason: losing the President's signature piece of legislation, the very cause which came at such an enormous political price, looked to have been all for naught. Those types of moment's can cause an existential crisis in even the most cocksure of politicians. During the three months that followed, the White House was noticeably down in the proverbial dumps.

Largely thanks to Mitt Romney's past experience with health care reform, the issue hasn't really been front and center during this election, and yet it really does seem to be the metaphysical force, for lack of better phrase, driving the momentum behind each campaign, if only on some unseen astral plane. We can talk all day about strategies and demographics and fund-raising numbers and a million other things, but in any competition it's never wise to understate the importance of the fight -- that is: the confidence, the desire to win, the swagger -- of the combatants. It should be clear that Justice Roberts' judgment changed the dynamic of this race in profound, but largely unquantifiable ways; and that, even though health care reform has not been much of an issue for almost three months now, it's at the very heart of Election 2012: the prime mover that set this year's political world in motion.

That's an, admittedly, romantic explanation, but one that essentially attributes the causes of Romney's declining fortunes to political voodoo. A more humanistic account probably goes something like this: Team Romney bought into the prognosticators premonitions regarding the doom of Obamacare and just didn't bother to prepare a contingency plan for when the result didn't shake out their way. Caught flat-footed, they may have been initially pleasantly surprised by how the decision riled up the based and fed their campaign coffers, and this might have lulled them into a false sense of security since, hey, most things had been going their way for a while anyway. But what they didn't take into account was the extent to which the decision galvanized the Obama camp, who came back from the Fourth of July holiday ready to crack skulls. Chicago seized the moment, and unleashed a previous attack -- the Bain gambit -- with more spirit and vigor then earlier and this time it began to snowball.

There are yet larger issues at play here, specifically the role of government in the individual lives of Americans who have been told for the last generation that government "is the problem," but the health care reform debate rather tightly encompasses that whole discussion. That's a topic for another day, however.

The GOP Convention has been an Un-Mitt-igated Disaster (Pun Intended)

Seriously, could things have gotten any worse for this shit show? Conventions are supposed to be tightly scripted performances of political theater. This year's convention has been all Id. Allow us to count the ways.

1.) Hurricane Isaac.

This was, admittedly, an Act of God, but a foreseeable one for which the GOP clearly had no contingency plan (sound familiar?). As a result, they were forced to suffer through an enjambed convention schedule, one that truncated the getting-to-know-you part of the original Monday night schedule and fused it with the red meat pandering of the Tuesday program. This produced ...

2.) Mixed Messages.

Much has already been justly made of the cross talk between Ann Romney's speech about "love" and Chris Christie's talk about putting "respect over love," but this wasn't just something that Chuck Todd noticed. It was blatant to even the most casual watcher. This begs several questions: a.) Did Team Romney even vet/clear/read any of the speeches ahead of time? and b.) What the hell happened to the fabled GOP message discipline of the last decade?

3.) The Whole Ron Paul Delegates Thing.

I don't know the nuances of party Parliamentary procedure, but the interviews with the Paul delegates from Maine who basically got rogered by the Rules Committee left little doubt that they were screwed over. It's never good to have unhappy delegates giving interviews to eager reporters. This was the type of issue that should have been settled before people buy plane tickets.

[And just in case the GOP leadership hasn't noticed, the Paul crew aren't as pliant as the Tea Party. They're ideologues, not suckers. They appear to be innately programmed to endure the slow and grueling slogs required to takeover state party apparatuses. They've already pretty much taken over not only Maine's party, but also Minnesota's, and they've made progress in a number of other states as well. That may not sound like a big deal now, but let's be honest here: two states are two too many in the eyes of GOP central command. When -- and it's coming -- they make enough gains to start tossing their weight around, they will remember this and they will likely be just as eager to compromise as they RNC was this week.]

4.) I Still Don't Know Anything More about Mitt Romney Than I did before the Convention Started.

Did you ever hear that really touching story about how Mitt Romney helped a little old lady cross the street when he was still in high school? No? Neither have I! Team Romney can't seem to come up with one -- one! -- example of a selfless act that demonstrates Mitt has the capacity to serve someone other than himself and/or his family. Not one. Not even the smallest, simplest, briefest moment of human decency or empathy ... or even sympathy. For the love of God, most people can't go a day without lending a hand to someone else, even if they do so grudgingly. How the hell can one person live 60 some odd years without giving a shit about anyone, but himself?

5.) Too Little, Too Late.

All things considered An Romney gave a pretty good speech on Tuesday, but it's the type of thing that should have been done months ago. We should already know about the travails of raising five young boys (without or without a nanny -- and don't think some reporter isn't already looking into that detail). This is just one of the numerous ways Romney's campaign has shot itself in the foot.

6.) Chris Christie's Speech.

I'm still debating with myself how it looked on TV, but apparently it was not well received within the arena. He would have been much better served promoting the hell out of Romney, proving himself to be a loyal soldier, than flagrantly shilling for himself they way he did ... and everyone else noticed.

7.) Condi's speech.

See #6. Her speech may have been much better received, but that's only because the last half was devoted to shameless pandering. The first half, the foreign policy portion -- you know, the subject she was brought on stage to talk about? -- was met with only the smattering of polite applause at best and crickets at worse. It was also a pretty shameless display of jockeying for 2016 position. As was the speech given by...

8.) Susana Martinez.

This was actually the best speech I've heard so far, but there was little attempt to mask it's ulterior motive, which was to further the speaker's prospects and not promote the nomine. That brings us to the the underlying current running between all the major speeches at the convention:

9.) The Praetorian Guard is Restless.

Admit it: all the up-and-coming GOP heavy hitters know Mitt Romney is going to lose and it's more than likely that they're going to play this election like a team of Chinese badminton players (here's the reference for those who have already forgotten). Don't get me wrong: they won't sabotage the campaign, but they won't put in the effort required to beat an incumbent. That's plainly clear given how little they seem to be discussing Romney in their speeches and how eager they are to talk about themselves. They see the writing on the wall: if Romney loses 2016 becomes the last chance many of these pols will have to make a serious run at the White House. It's basically in everyone's self-interest to see Mitt Romney lose.

10.) Scott Walker.

Anyone who thinks Walker has a career in national politics -- something we have repeatedly dismissed even as he defies us here in Wisconsin -- is getting a good look at just how unlikely that is this week. Walker's speech tanked. He was greeted with thunderous applause on Tuesday, but left the stage with only a tepid sign of gratitude. That's something a good politician can get over, but I doubt there will be any end of mockery to his "crocodile tears of joy" moment during Paul Ryan's speech. It just looked awful -- completely phony and obviously staged (was it just a coincidence that everyone standing within a 15 foot radius of him was a foot shorter than he was?).

Speaking of awful, do you know whom else's speech sucked?

11.) Paul Ryan.

Well, America: you finally got a look at the GOP's boy wonder and found out that he's  ... boring. Conventions are clearly not Ryan forte (yet, he still has time to add this skill to his repertoire). Ryan's speech was backloaded with the crowd pleasing lines that should have been sprinkled throughout the whole speech in a kind of call-and-response exchange with the crowd to keep them involved. Instead, he bored them damn near to death. The speech was excruciatingly long and felt even longer. The shot of Ryan's young son propping his head up against his hand wasn't just adorable because it's a cute kid, but because that's exactly how everyone listening to the speech felt. This was not a political speech, but a weird hybrid between a video dating monologue and an academic lecture. Ryan will surely be better on the stump during the rest of the campaign, but this was his golden opportunity to differentiate himself from the rest of the GOP 2016 pack and he did not do that last night.

There you go ... and that doesn't even include the grotesquely ugly nut throwing incident, the dubious factual ground just about everything being said seems to rest on or any of the myriad other issues surrounding the convention.

All of the above creates an enormous hole for Romney to dig himself out of tonight, because many of these issues are going to linger on, and quite possibly for a while. Now does anyone really think Romney is capable of digging himself out of that hole? He basically has to perform a flawless triple lindy with no splash. That's not going to happen.

What's worse is that when the smoke clears and the ashes settle and Mitt Romney is finally declared out for the count it is now obvious that he will be savaged by his own party harder than any losing Presidential candidate in living memory, maybe even history. My guess is that the off-the record back-biting will begin sometime in early October and probably won't end until well after Inauguration Day. We've already been given a preview of what that's going to look like. So far it's pretty tame, but it's still the kind of thing that usually doesn't happen in winning campaigns, and rarely happens to any campaign this early in the election.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Romney will unleash the fury and go Hulk on the art of oratory tonight? Maybe this is all just one giant rope-a-dope and the Democratic Party is just bobbing it's head gullibly, donning a shit-eating grin entirely unawares that Mitt the Mauler only sees a target the size of Lake Winnipesaukee? Maybe the GOP aligned Super PAC's and special interest groups will come to Romney's aide like Gandolph during the Battle of Helm's Deep? (Maybe I can somehow shoehorn a shout out to Battlestar Galactica to solidify my geek bona fides?)

I guess we'll find out tonight.

A Wisconsin Blogger's Compendium of Paul Ryan Posts

Enjoy, America!

Paul Ryan: Cassandra or Chicken Little? (4/4/10)
Ignore the Wine and Focus on Ryan's Voting Record (7/10/11)
The Evolution of Paul Ryan's "Tipping Point" (4/8/10)
Paul Ryan's Budget (2/1/10)
Paul Ryan vs. Vermont (the Winner gets to Craft America's 21st Century Health Care Policy) (10/14/11)
Paul Ryan is Born Again!!! (12/14/11)
Paul Ryan's Presidential Ambitions (2/5/10)
Paul Ryan's "American Idea" is neither very American nor much of an Idea (11/21/11)
If Paul Ryan takes Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan Seriously, should we keep taking Paul Ryan Seriously? (10/13/11)
Ron Johnson's 12-point Plan to Save the Economy and Achieve Relevance (8/30/11)
Tomorrow's Ron Johnson Talking Points Today! (7/22/10)
The Smartest Guy in the GOP (2/18/11)
Paul Ryan kicks off the GOP Vice Presidential Nomination Campaign Season (10/26/11)
More on the Ryan Budget (2/2/10)
Latest Conservative Buzz Phrase: "Tipping Point" (4/8/10)
Paul Ryan Tells It Like It Is (3/12/09)
Today's Edition of Hysterical Health Care Reform Hyperventilating (4/5/10)
Paul Ryan's Budget is Pretty Much a Catastrophe on Every Level (3/11/10)
Paul Ryan Delivers an Economic Speech at a Think Tank Named after Herbert Hoover (9/28/11)
Good Idea/Bad Idea (1/6/10)
The Apostle Paul (Ryan)'s Epistle to the Hillsdalites (1/15/10)
Republicans Who are Publicly Signing on to the Paul Ryan Budget, Vol I (2/9/10)
The Juiciest Paul Ryan Gossip You'll Probably Ever Read (9/27/10)
"In the past I had been a fan of Ryan. I am not a fan any longer." (12/11/08)

Mitt Romney Stars in "The Help"

Yikes:

(CBS News) Mitt Romney held up the waiters and waitresses serving donors at a fundraising event Monday night as examples of people who aren't doing well under President Obama. 

Addressing 300 contributors at a Jackson, Miss., fundraiser who paid $2,500, $10,000 or $50,000 to hear him speak, Romney acknowledged that the people in the room were well-off compared to many Americans. It was the middle class that had been let down by Obama, Romney said, and he pointed to the wait staff serving finger foods as an example. 

"It's tough being middle class in America right now," Romney said. "The waiters and waitresses that come in and out of this room and offer us refreshments, they're not having a good year. The people of the middle class of America are really struggling. And they're struggling I think in a way because they're surprised because when they voted for Barack Obama...he promised them that things were going to get a heck a lot of better. He promised hope and change and they're still waiting."

Get it! Waiting! Slick use of the double entendre there, hoss.

The 10:00 show is different from the 7:30, folks. Don't forget to tip your waitresses!

Mitt Romney's Epistle to the NAACP

If you're silly enough to buy the premise that Mitt Romney's address before the NAACP was part of some ill-conceived GOP outreach program to African-Americans, then let me please disabuse you of this notion immediately.

Nearly everything Romney said today was specifically designed to illicit as much booing, hissing and negative crowd reaction as Romney could possibly muster. It's almost a demonstration of just how weak Romney's oratorical skills are that no one jumped out from their seat's and yelled "You lie!" during the speech. Romney wasn't pandering to the crowd, but he wasn't reaching out to them either. Instead, Romney was using the NAACP audience as a prop to pander to the worst elements of the GOP: the white voters who still harbor a great deal of racial resentment oh so many years after the Civil Rights era.

How did he accomplish this? Simple: this gravely cynical maneuver is part of the "bitch slap" playbook that Romney seems to think is the only way of proving to his base that he is just as unhinged with rage as they are. Think of it as a little more sophisticated than driving the campaign bus around an Obama event honking the horn.

Expecting black Americans to split with Obama is like expecting Mormon Americans to split with Romney --  it's just not going to happen because the ties between the groups and the candidates are so personal that they transcend politics in most cases. This kind of tactic probably wasn't possible even as recently as 2008, but since political information is such a niche product today it's likely that the people Romney is actually trying to appeal to -- white, middle-aged men -- will see highlights from the speech and get the idea, probably with the assistance of the Fox News/talk radio/lunatic blogger/announcer framing the event, that Romney was speaking truth to some kind of power.

(MORE: See what I mean?)

If this sounds like a bridge too far to cross, then consider the only other alternatives for a minute: (1) Mitt Romney is actually completely clueless about a large segment of Americans that have serious issues which need addressing, or (2) he genuinely doesn't care. Suddenly the cynical political seems far more merciful.

Ron Johnson's Very Bad Field Trip to the Supreme Court

Far and away the biggest loser in the wake of the Supreme Court's Obamacare ruling, at least as far as Wisconsin is concerned, is Ron Johnson. Here's why:

Obamacare has always been Johnson's pet issue. He cited it has the issue that motivated him to run for the Senate in 2010. The issue caused him to cravenly retrofit the story of his daughter's infant illness into a political parable. His rhetoric on the subject has been so overwrought so as to be nothing short of apocalyptic. He's repeatedly called the law "the greatest assault on our freedom in my lifetime" and claimed that it's implementation would result in the removal of American's "last shred of freedom."

This kind of rhetoric is patently absurd, but it's really all Johnson has in his struggle against the bill. 

Starting in early March Johnson and his team put together a strong publicity push designed to make Johnson appear to be one of the law's principle opponents. The Senator may certainly loathe the plan more than his colleagues, but he's done precious little--if anything--about it. He appeared on just about every cable news show there is, wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal and sat in the gallery during the arguments. Each time he repeated his predictions of doom.

Johnson's strategy (and that of several other Senators) was to basically let the GOP lawyers do the heavy-lifting in front of the Justices and then swoop in front of the cameras when it came time to hand out credit. Why else do you think he was hanging outside the Court on Thursday? It wasn't to hand out unspeakably stupid soundbites to liberal watchdogs groups.

Now Johnson looks silly. His statement following the ruling was characteristically hyperbolic:

“Today’s Obamacare decision establishes that there is no area of Americans’ private lives that is off limits to federal intrusion and control. Freedom took a real body blow. It is now up to Congress – and hopefully a new President – to repeal this unpopular monstrosity and replace it with free market reforms that will actually improve the quality and restrain the cost of health care in America.”

(Here's a fun game: replace the word "freedom" with "Ron Johnson" any time you read or hear a Johnson speech/op-ed/statement. The words are almost perfectly interchangeable, which should probably give the reader a pretty good hint as to what "freedom" means to Ron Johnson.)

If you need further proof of just how disastrous this decision is for Johnson just listen to this interview with Charlie conducted not long after the ruling. Johnson doesn't even bother to hide how dejected he is or how bad the decision is for him. That's largely because Johnson has staked an enormous amount of his political capital on the law being repealed. Yes, Johnson does manage to recite the GOP's talking points about this firing up the base and this being a "tax increase" that the President must now run against, but does anyone really think the Republicans were going to run a campaign without accusing the Democrats of raising taxes? Has that ever happened? Is the GOP even capable of doing that?

Now that Johnson has lost the "freedom" argument, expect him to pivot to the "cost" issue. The first is a moral argument, one that any idiot can make. The second is a policy matter and this is where Johnson has proved to frequently flounder. Johnson's approval/disapproval numbers sit at an underwhelming 36/35. More temper tantrums will not win over the 29% of Wisconsin voters still waiting for Johnson to connect with them.

Last Night's Biggest Winner/Loser: Scott Walker

So instead of becoming the third governor to get recalled, Scott Walker becomes the first Governor in U.S. history to single-handedly piss away his majority in the legislative branch. He went from a bullet-proof +4 majority in an upper house of 33 to now being down -1 heading into a presidential election year, which Republicans haven't mastered in the state of Wisconsin since 1984. I know redistricting and and the mysteries of Dale Shultz's mustache aren't as sexy as giving a genuinely awful, chest-pounding, cock-waving victory speech in prime time (seriously, Walker must be the least articulate Governor in Wisconsin's history--his speech-writers are as shitty as his ad-makers are good, a true testamentary to his tenuousness with the the truth), but voters in Wisconsin sent him a clear message these last 16 months that ran 100% contrary to lessons he professed to have learned from this whole recall process: you have to work with the other side. Scott Walker has never once demonstrated a willingness or ability to do that and this trait, more than even his potential legal troubles, will give him a world of pain in the next two years (see Walker's spectacular G-tac faceplant). Oh yeah, and all this only cost Walker, et al. $60+ million dollars.

Right now there are two contestable state senate seats: the first is right here in the Oshkosh and Fond du Lac county area, the second is the seat soon to be vacated by Jim Holperin. The race up north might be a lost cause. The one in the Fox Valley is going to be fought tooth and nail, largely between the incumbent and outside groups that have nothing to do with the area, but even if the Dems lose both of the seats Walker will still enter 2013 much, much weaker than he entered 2011. The voters of Wisconsin were clearly not in the mood to recall the governor, but they weren't willing to let his bullshit go unpunished either. Some folks--i.e. Matt Yglesias--seem to think this represents contradictory behavior, but I like to think of it as being a far more nuanced solution to what seemingly appeared to be a black and white option. Maybe this should be chalked up to a "wisdom of mobs" type thing, but anyone who calls the 16 months a vindication of Walker's policies is fooling themselves or lying (or in the case of Charlie Sykes, both).

There are many distressing signs for Democrats, but those are out in the open. The entire state GOP has put their eggs in the Scott Walker basket and if he drops it, many will be screwed. They might not lose their jobs, but any hopes of advancement will be quashed. Despite the Manichean analysis of last night from the East coast, Republicans still have to contend with a considerable deficit in the Presidential race, one that will impact down ticket races later this year. Tales of imminent Armageddon may make good copy and generate a lot of page hits, but they also over-simplify the reality on the ground here.

This may actually become the costliest Pyrrhic victory in state history. If Walker is indicted and the Democrats aren't stupid enough to let him use the charges to paint himself as a victim (I know that's asking a lot, but it's probably something Dems should start planning for). Walker's downfall could have very long lasting effects. There isn't a Republican Facebook page in the state that doesn't have a picture with some volunteer or young go-getter or big shot donor or potential future candidate for office with a flat-angled photo mugging with Walker. Hopefully the Dems are smart enough to scour the internet and get copies of all these pics because those are potentially direct mail pieces that write themselves in 2016, 2018, 2020 and maybe even beyond. That's probably expecting too much foresight on the Dems part, but since this is a job that an intern could probably do in a day or two, it's well worth the effort.

Lastly, and I have nothing to really base this opinion on except anecdotal evidence, I really do think that the very concept of the recall itself was a bridge that a lot of Wisconsinites could not cross. Not once have I seen a poll that really probed this angle with any depth. Dems not only had to make the case for their candidates, but they also had to make the case for the recall itself and there wasn't enough time to do that. The law is set up so that there shouldn't be any need to make the case for recall. The recallee should be preforming so awfully that his unfitness for office should be manifest to everyone. That's probably a good thing.

From here on in Walker will have no foil. Even if he is indicted, it will be very difficult to play off the prosecution as engaging in political retribution because this case has been going on so long. (Don't think that will stop Walker from trying or the Dems from somehow letting him get away with it.) Legal issues are, of course, very sexy, but they really will only amount to background noise to a much bigger policy issue that Walker needs to contend with.

Throughout his career Walker's only successes have come when the odds are heavily stacked in his favor. He definitely deserves credit for frequently picking his fights with a certain degree of timeliness, but if this recall managed to do anything it forced Walker to reiterate at the top of his lungs a promise he will not be able to keep. 250,000 are not going to emerge from the ether by fiat. Dueling jobs numbers is a magic bullet that can only be used once. Now he actually has to produce results. As we've noted earlier, this is not Walker's forte.

So what's the big lesson from last night? There are some truly insipid pieces of commentary, mostly from the Washington I-am-an-expert-on-everything! set, that really amount to little more that "First Wisconsin was a red state! Then it was a blue state! Now it's back to being a red state!" because God forbid human social organization admit of anything other than a binary description. The only real lesson that can be gleaned from last night is that Wisconsin voters are fickle. Very, very fucking fickle.

I haven't bothered to review the state's lefty blogs this morning to examine the finger-pointing and fall-out largely because a lot of that already started a few weeks ago (probably the surest sign of a campaign's imminent demise is when that starts to happen before election day). I'll let other folks worry about who's "fault" it all was. I'm sure there was a ton of piling on the amorphous blob known as "the media" too, but bitching about something does little to explain why it happens or fix the problem. A number of folks are apparently livid at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, but we'll have to save our thoughts on that until another time, largely because there are many of them.

And if last night's event really messed with your head, buck up: at least we'll now be able to get to the bottom of that dastardly voter fraud busing scheme!

If You Believe People from Michigan were Bused into Wisconsin to Vote Today, then You really have to Meet this Nigerian Prince I Know

One can count on a few certainties just about every Election Day in Wisconsin. Polls will open at 8:00 AM and by around 10:00 AM we're all sure to get our first "eyewitness reports" of voter fraud on right wing radio. Today did not disappoint, but the example that we got was so ridiculously inept that even on it's surface the story was nearly impossible to take credibly. Naturally, it bounced around the right side of Twitter with a vengeance and looks like it will be taken as inerrant gospel for the foreseeable future.

Before we look at the transcript, here's some context. The radio station is WMAL out of the Washington, DC media market. The caller's name is "Mike," no last name given, and he claimed to be calling from a bus making its way to someplace in Wisconsin--he couldn't say where, specifically-- from just outside Detroit.

Here's the transcript:

Moral Victories

Just a quick note regarding tomorrow's festivities:

There is no such thing as a "moral victory" in elections--you either win or go the hell home--and chances are that most of the commentary you're going to read in the next week will reflect that. Regardless of how much Scott Walker wins by tomorrow, you'll likely hear how catastrophic the recall was for Dems. There will, of course, be some truth to that strain of thought, but here are some things to consider:

1.) Recalls laws in Wisconsin give huge advantages to incumbents. We can debate the justness of these advantages until the cows come home, but there's little denying they exist, and do so in an outlandishly over-sized proportion to the normal advantages incumbents get during conventionally scheduled elections.

2.) The largest of these advantages is the unlimited fundraising loophole that Walker took full advantage of. Good for him. We won't know for a few more weeks, but it's possible that Walker could have out-raised and/or outspent Barrett something in the order of 20:1. Usually, when one sees a money discrepancy that large the race is between a safe incumbent and a sacrificial lamb--a race that's deemed "uncontested." In this respect, anything less than a blowout on Walker's part is very much defeat. A minor one, but still a defeat.

3.) It's likely that if Walker wins tomorrow, he'll do so by a margin smaller than the one he won by in 2010. If the only poll that really matter is the one taken on Election Day, then that's a measurable step backward for Walker.

4.) Walker went all in for this race. A few weeks from now his "30,000+ job created" gambit might look pretty embarrassing for a variety of reasons. Renewing his pledge to create 250,000 jobs by the end of his first term was likely a move to satisfy a short-term need at the expense of a long-term interest.

5.) Walker will spend the rest of his tenure working without a net. He will have no margin for error. If he's indicted for election shenanigans in the County exec's office he might only lose 2-3% of the moderate Republicans that will support him during the recall, but that will be enough to sink him.

6.) The Wisconsin GOP deserves a great deal of credit for preserving their man in the middle of this shitstorm. Wisconsin is likely the best organized state in the midwest for conservatives. They called for all hands on deck and they got it. On a any given day, they are likely better organized then their Dem counterparts and this gap is only likely to get wider during the next decade (between redistricting and the neutering of union strength). Let's face it: Republicans are better at doing the hard work of herding their own cats, while Dems in Wisconsin would much rather schedule sing-a-longs in the Capitol, hold neon signs over freeways and put on yet another benefit concert at the High Noon Salon. If Democrats can convince their people to spend time making phone calls and/or visiting neighbors instead of doing the job of a sign post, they'll be in business. 

7.) The most interesting race tomorrow is the Racine state senate race. If Van Wwaannggaarrdd (spelling?) loses, that'll really be a turd in Walker's punch bowl.

8.) The last pro-Walker WMC ad I saw on TV--which apparently sucked such a huge bowl of goats' balls that no one bothered to put it online--had some of the worst production values of any political ad I've ever seen. Were I a member of this group that supposedly represents "business" I would be outraged that they spent my money on such a shitty product. Honestly, it was on par with the Hari Trevedi ad; maybe even worse.

9.) Believe it or not, this is not the most contentious the state of Wisconsin has ever been. Very early in our state's existence there was an honest-to-God real constitutional crisis that was the functional equivalent of today + Florida 2000 ...  and yet I haven't seen a single newspaper article in the last 16 months about the great Barstow/Bashford clusterfuck of 1855. Usually digging into our past and finding a worse example of today's polarization is a pretty routine way to create some copy for any journalist, but apparently not one reporter in the state of Wisconsin bothered to even look. 

SPOILER ALERT: Both men were supremely corrupt assholes (one of whom was "from" Oshkosh!) who got away with far more than Scott Walker could even contemplate getting away with today. That's what I call progress. Forward, bitches. Forward.

Wither Brand Wisconsin

There's no shortage of contenders for the worst marketing campaign in the history of the world, but most of them do all have something in common: the company doing the marketing usually had the good sense to end the campaign before it could do further damage to the brand.

Not so in Wisconsin. Whether we realize it or not, Wisconsin is a brand and one that's dogged by an unflattering, and not entirely inaccurate, reputation for being cold, rural, obese and drunk. Usually the one positive thing out-of-staters think about Wisconsin is that we're very friendly. Unfortunately, the further from the midwest one travels the more frequently one finds that Wisconsin is not a destination people aspire to so much as it is a place where people happen to eventually find themselves. That's not good for business, both figuratively and literally.

The last 16 months have done unspeakable damage to Wisconsin's reputation. The current fiasco in Madison has taken a brand no one was terribly thrilled about to begin with and made it toxic, like replacing a Olive Garden with a White Castle. It's already entirely possible that this image will take a generation to repair and it's not going to get any better any time soon.

It's impossible to imagine any business would want to either move to Wisconsin or start up a company here given the political climate. The current "uncertainty" that Walker blames the state's anemic economic performance isn't going to end when the recalls are over. This whole affair has been so protracted that it's likely that most out-of-staters will just assume that this is the new normal in Wisconsin and they're probably right.

In all likelihood, Scott Walker will win the recall election next month. That will be followed by a ferocious five month fight for control of the Senate. Depending on the outcome, we might see a special legislative session to end the year before we sprint headlong into either very tense budget talks (if the Dems win the senate) or "right to work" legislation (if the GOP keeps control). February 2013 could look a lot like February 2011 did. None of this will help mend the perception of the state as being hotbed of partisan angst.

It's also possible that in 2013 we might finally see an indictment brought against Walker for some kind of misuse of the Milwaukee County Executive's office. Since he's already set up a defense fund, it's a good bet that this will happen. Milwaukee DA John Chisholm can't bring charges before November of this year or in 2014 without facing allegations that he's "politicizing his office" (wank, wank, wank...), so it would seem like mid-2013 would be his best window of opportunity. If that happens, expect the Wisconsin brand to be further tarnished.

And for a very long time. Walker will almost certainly use the Scott Jensen strategy for defending one's indiscretions in office, namely, delay, delay, delay. It's a smart legal strategy, but not a very good political one and an awful marketing tactic. Then it's on to Walker's re-election campaign. That'll give Wisconsin four years of continuous, terrible press and in a 24 hour news cycle world four years are eons.

The damage Walker's done to the Wisconsin brand will long outlast his time in office, however long that happens to be. What makes this all the more incomprehensible is that Walker's entire job creation strategy is based on bringing business from out-of-state into Wisconsin. Walker is his own worst enemy when it comes to economic growth in Wisconsin.

Say what you will about Jim Doyle, but the guy was as dedicated to bringing jobs to Wisconsin as any Governor in recent memory. Doyle frequently traveled outside the state and personally met with many business owners to try to convince them to move their operations to Wisconsin. Most of the companies that did make the move were very small (fewer than 10 employees) biotech firms that have yet to win FDA approval for their products. These are very tedious and unsexy "gets," and many of them might not be around ten years from now, but biotech and pharmaceutical companies have a nasty habit of blowing up once they get an OK from the feds. A company with four or five employees today can have 50 or 60 a decade from now and 500-600 twenty years down the road. This was all in addition to providing home-grown biotech firms with a ton of state resources to help them succeed. Doyle focused on this industry for a reason: he saw the potential for biotech to become an integral part of the state's economy and a way to make Wisconsin a leader of cutting edge science. Doyle had a long-term vision, one that would ultimately and fundamentally change the Wisconsin brand for the better.

The results of those efforts might not be evident for decades. It took EPIC Systems in Madison nearly 30 years to become what it is today and science ain't easy, but it was was a well-thought out plan very much worth the risk.

By contrast Walker's efforts to create jobs have been catastrophic. Last year's budget forced hundreds of teachers and public employees into early retirement and many of those positions aren't being refilled. The stunning way in which he handled Talgo upon entering office was offensive to even passive bystanders. I don't know how any business could watch that episode unfold and come away thinking that the Walker administration was capable of forming a functional partnership with the private sector. The venture capital fund is something that should have sailed through the legislature in one form or another, but Walker's was much more concerned about appearing to balance the state's ledgers.

The only business Walker has appeared to personally stick his neck out for was the G-Tac mining interest, another disastrous bust. This was an especially pitiful ordeal to watch because it demonstrated just how ill-equipped Walker is at creating jobs, despite his aggressive arrogance. First Walker, and the rest of the GOP caucus, appeared the be willing to give away the store by letting a single company re-write the law to suit it's own purposes. G-Tac ran such an incompetent PR operation that it almost seemed like Walker had given them assurances that the law would pass, despite the certainty of a legal challenge from the Bad River Chippewa. It's also the same part of the state that spent 30 years fighting  a mine in Crandon. Walker never visited the area to build support. He seemed to think the mining bill would sail through the legislature. Then he lost two vote when a pair of GOP senators were recalled largely for supporting his budget.

Plus, it's mining--not exactly the industry of tomorrow.

Unlike Doyle, Walker hasn't had any time to schmooze the private sector and sell them on Wisconsin. He's been too busy raising money for his own recall campaign. Don't expect that to change after the recall election. Walker will still be tending to distractions of his own creation until the John Doe investigation concludes. It's also pretty hard to imagine Walker being very effective at outreach while he's under investigation.

But don't worry: Walker still plans on creating 250,000 new jobs in Wisconsin by New Year's Day 2015, as he reaffirmed at the state GOP convention this month, even though this might not even be mathematically possible:

It appears it will be difficult for Walker to achieve his job-creation goal. Jobs data is available through March, and from this April to December 2014, Walker would have to create nearly 7,400 private-sector jobs a month, or 88,800 a year, to meet his mark. 

Nothing close to that has happened over the past two decades. The most private-sector job growth came in 1994, when 72,400 jobs were added, according to average annual employment figures from the state Department of Workforce Development. Jobs numbers for April are due Thursday.

And now we know how he's going to achieve it: by changing the metrics.

Walker's legions of GOP voters might be taken by this bullshit, but actual business people won't be. Even if Wisconsin was free from all of the political rancor which Scott Walker is alone responsible for it would still have a hard time attracting businesses because we're lagging in economic growth, a massive detail that is far more important than tax breaks in most business owners minds. After all, what good are tax breaks if your company's not making any money to begin with? No one's going to invest in a state that's heading in the wrong direction.

None of that really matters to Walker how badly he damages the Wisconsin brand because it will all be in the name of growing the Scott Walker brand. Walker's entire political career has been acting with an aim to the next office in mind. The problem is that, one way or another, this is Walker's last job in politics--only he doesn't realize it yet. The only promotion he can get will require Senate confirmation and he's never going to get that so long as there are 41 Dems in upper house and that's what makes Walker's Wisconsin's brand for the sake of his all the more frustrating.

Ron Johnson's Curious Snub of the Tea Party

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the line-up of next week's Tea Party for Scott Walker wank-a-thon is one glaring omission: Sen. Ron Johnson. The party is right in his back yard and this is the kind of pliant and doting crowd to which he usually restricts his public appearances. Not making an appearance would be stunningly dumb. He'd get statewide media attention for next to no effort and little gestures like this go a long way toward keeping in the good graces of activists and colleagues alike. I guess he's got better things to do, but it still looks like a snub.


It's another in a series of puzzling scheduling moves that really demonstrate just how adept Johnson is at alienating people he is supposed to be accommodating. Last month Johnson gave the keynote speech at the New York GOP annual convention, but the question remains: why? Usually a Senator does something like that as a favor to a colleague that can be cashed in for one of his own at a later date or to increase his national stature, but in this case there really was nothing to be gained. New York is a solidly blue state. There are no GOP Senators from the Empire State. The New York GOP is famously dysfunctional. It's one thing to make a weekend of it in Manhattan, but the convention was in Rochester. The speech won him no media exposure back here in Wisconsin. Johnson would have been better served doing just about anything else.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Johnson will find time in his schedule to make a drop-in. After all, the secretary of the  Rally in the Fox Valley PAC is also the receptionist of Johnson's Oshkosh office. If he doesn't, then it really will feel like slap in the face.

The "Rally in the Valley" will be Emceed by (Possible) Fraud Jake Jacobs

So the local Tea party is having a little shindig next weekend and all the big guns are going to be there. Just look at that line up: it's only a lunatic radio talk show host away from inducing a pulmonary embolisms in every last one of the elderly folks who will spend the afternoon in their lawn chairs. If you're like, you probably looked through the list and and asked yourself, "Who is this Jake Jacobs fellow?" Well, funny you should mention that...

Jacobs is an evangelical zealot who recently a teacher at Winneconne High School before deciding to pursue a life as a professional asshole, by which I mean someone who sells himself as an authority on pretty much everything. Unfortunately, there are all sorts of strange inconsistencies with Jacobs story. Here's how he describes his education:

Concerned about the ACLU & NEA’s attempt to revise America’s Judeo-Christian Foundation Jake earned a Ph.D. in Early American History from North-West University with his Dissertation titled; The Influence of Biblical Ideas on Early American Republicanism and History.

OK, but there isn't a "North-West University" in the United States. There's one in South Africa. There's a "Northwest University" in Washington state, but it seems strange that someone would misspell the name of his alma mater. And if you think that's a typo on the part of the web site, think again: it appears on his LinkedIn page too, which one assumes Jacobs had more editorial control over.

More to the point is the little matter of his dissertation: "The Influence of Biblical Ideas on Early American Republicanism and History." I couldn't find a record of it in ProQuest database of Dissertation and Theses. It's possible that I was searching incorrectly or that it's just not listed, so if I'm wrong, do please correct me in the comments. It's also possible that Northwest U. doesn't make it's dissertations available, since I couldn't seem to find any theses available from the school. Some schools do this and it's bullshit. Even for-profit online schools like Northcentral University include their dissertations in various databases.

Jacob's "book" Mobocracy doesn't exactly lend itself to be the kind of serious scholarly work that a PhD would produce. It's really just a long, shrill blog post written by a partisan lunatic. We would know: we write them all the time. Making matter worse are all the strange inconsistencies the make up the marketing of the "book." Here Jacobs ends his description of the book with the cri de coeur "Semper Fi to the Republic!" Yes, that sounds extravagantly melodramatic, but Semper Fi is usually something of shibboleth uttered among veterans of the Marine Corps. There's nothing in Jacobs resume suggesting military service, but he clearly wants his readers to believe as much. The "reviews" of his book feature three dead people, a word of thanks from former governor Jim Doyle completely unrelated to the book and the kind words of a former student. (Before he took his song and dance to Marquette, Ethan Hollenberger was active in the UW-O college Republicans where he won a well-deserved reputation for using public displays of shallow jackassery to advance his causes. Now we know where that came from.)

Jacobs says he teaches at Lakeland College, but there's no record of him in the faculty directory. Then again, the directory is rather open about the fact that it might not include every staff member. There's also the possibility that Jacobs did teach their (or one of their satellite campuses) some time in the past

Then there's the issue of how long he's been teaching. On LinkedIn, he says it's 23 years and just in Winneconne. On MeetUp, he says it's 25 in both Wisconsin and Arizona. This begs the question, well, which one is it?

There's question about why Jacobs is no longer teaching. On his MeetUp page, Jacobs claims to have "been teaching Conservative Values for 25 years in AZ/WI Public Schools," which is a no-no. 23 or 25 years is also an odd time to leave the teaching profession voluntarily. Usually teachers ride out another 5-10 years before retirement, but that's not a word that appears anywhere in Jacobs various CVs, which leads one to believe he just quit.

Jacobs also calls himself a "historian," thought he does seem to have produced any academic works of history to back that claim up. I'm not even talking about peer-reviewed history, I mean any history. What few writing that appear online are all polemic works of opinion. Aside from his idiotic book, Jacobs seems to have authored three articles, only one of which has anything remotely to do with anything historical.

He claims to be the "president of founder" of something called the Politically Incorrect Institute, which doesn't seem to have a web site, a brick and mortar HQ or staff of any kind. In other words, it seems to exist only in Jacobs' mind.

On Mobocracy's Facebook page (at least his "book" has a web page) Jacobs claims to have been "awarded the MOST politically incorrect public school teacher in Wisconsin and America," but doesn't say by whom. He might as well claim to be the world's greatest juggler.

Basically, Jake Jacobs appears to be a fraud. There might be answers that clear these inconsistencies up, but they don't seem to be available online. Not that this will stop him from peddling his tripe in front of tea party circle jerks. Nor will end his frequent appearances on VCY radio, the batshit insane zealot shitshow from Milwaukee. Jacobs seems to be going out of his way

Jacobs will be joined by a whole slew of compatriots with similar creditability problems. There's Kim Simac, the nutcase birther who ran one of the most incompetent campaigns in recent memory for state senate last year. Her acquaintance with the facts is famously tenuous. Then there's Mark Block, who's back running the state chapter of AFP after running Herman Cain's circus into the ground earlier this year. Cain Himself might make a cameo too. There will also be a couple of fringe candidates for U.S. Senate and perennial congressional also-ran Dan Sebring.

It sounds like it's going to be a wonderful time.

Ron Johnson's Crass Vote Aginst the Violence Against Women Act

Yesterday the Senate passed an extension of the Violence Against Women Act. Ron Johnson voted against the extension and here's his explanation as to why:

“I believe it’s critical to ensure that laws are in place to prevent and deter crime – against both women and men. Regrettably, the debate over the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act was completely politicized by the Senate Democratic leadership.

“Republicans offered very reasonable alternatives to extend the Violence Against Women Act. Senate Democrats today defeated proposals to provide U.S. Marshalls the tools they need to track sex offenders across state lines. They voted against legislation to establish an interstate database for DNA evidence, to ensure sex offenders are brought to justice regardless or the jurisdiction in which they commit their crimes. And they rejected legislation to provide additional funds to allow law enforcement to pursue justice for hundreds of thousands of women – women whose cases may depend on the results of DNA tests from rape evidence kits currently caught in a backlog that stretches to the hundreds of thousands.

“The partisan bill pushed through by Senate Democrats today does nothing to address these.”

The vote and was anything but partisan and passed 68-31. That's 15 Republicans voting in favor of the extension.

It's very tempting to dismiss the omissions from the bill Johnson cites above as being little more than rhetoric to cover his vote against what should be a no-brainer. Each of the provisions Johnson notes above cost money and are expansions of the federal government, so at least according to one of the guiding principles of his governing philosophy, Johnson appears to be contradicting himself.

What's more likely is that Johnson voted against the bill for the same reasons every other Republican who voted against it did:

But other Republicans objected to a number of the measure’s new provisions. One would add language barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in programs funded through the measure.

Another would let law enforcement issue up to 5,000 more visas each year to battered illegal immigrants who agree to participate in the prosecution of serious crimes. The 2000 update of the bill set aside 10,000 visas annually for that purpose, which advocates believe encourages victims to report crime. All 10,000 are being issued each year, and advocates say more are needed.

A final area of contention would provide the government new authority to prosecute non-Indian men who abuse Indian women on tribal reservations.

It's this last area that is of particular relevance to Wisconsin. Wisconsin has one of the largest Native populations in the country; by this measure it's #9 at about 41,000. The Domestic violence epidemic among Native Americans isn't a well-kept secret and it's further complicated by the byzantine nuances between the intersections of tribal, state and federal law:

There is an epidemic of domestic violence on Native American reservations. According to the National Congress of American Indians, a Native American rights advocacy group, about 40 percent of Native American women will face domestic violence. But more than half of Native American women are married to non-Native American men, which means that when cases of abuse arise, the local tribal authorities can do very little because they don't have jurisdiction over non-tribe members.

State and federal prosecutors have the authority to prosecute domestic violence on reservations, but for geographic and logistical reasons, it often goes unaddressed. "A federal prosecutor is not going to be able to expend the kind of energy on misdemeanors that local police officers would spend energy on," says Paulette Moore, vice president for public policy at the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

As Mother Jones reported last year, local authorities' inability or unwillingness to deal with domestic violence cases in Native American communities has contributed to an underground industry of vigilantes for hire who take matters into their own hands. The current version of the Violence Against Women Act would allow tribal authorities to prosecute non-Indians for domestic violence cases on Indian reservations, but Republicans are opposing it because they don't like the idea of Native American law applying to non-tribe members.

"For the first time, the Committee would extend tribal criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians," Grassley said in his floor speech. "I do not believe the Committee has a good understanding of what the consequences would be of doing so." The bill contains language that affirms non-tribe members prosecuted receive the same due process protections they would be entitled to under the US Constitution.

The bill's supporters expressed confusion at Grassley's logic. "Suppose your sister was with you in Washington, DC, and her husband beat her up," Moore says, "but because he was from Virginia, Washington couldn't do anything about it."

This is a problem that disproportionately effects Wisconsin, but that doesn't seem to matter to Johnson whose only motivation for voting on bigger issues in the Senate seems to be spite.

Or maybe it's fear, which is usually a much stronger motivator. It frequently seems that Johnson only seeks to appease the core elements of his support, the revanchist wing of the conservative movement. because if he loses their support he has none. That's the corner Johnson's painted himself into and he's apparently so afraid of drawing their ire that he's willing to lay abused women on their alter. That's pretty discomforting.

To be sure, Johnson is not mistaken by believing that the vote on VAWA was politicized. Then again, the votes of every bill are politicized. This is politics, after all.

Luckily, should Johnson choose to run for re-election he will certainly hear about this vote.

Don't Call it a Comeback (No, Seriously, Please Don't)

So the big local news this afternoon is that Paul Esslinger will be running for state assembly.

Esslinger spent eleven years on the city council, the last two as mayor, and during that time he provided voters with countless examples of just how uniquely unqualified he is to conduct public affairs. Here are just a few examples from his disastrous first year as mayor. The only real aspiration, plan or vision for the city he ever stated publicly was the creation of a Bay Beach-like amusement park at Menominee Park. His only accomplishment of note was his small role in the renovation of Pollock Pool.

More often than not Esslinger used his office to air personal grievances. He will campaign as a small government conservative on a mission to cut spending, but this is the same guy who demanded the city pay his legal bills when he got into a scuffle, and was subsequently investigated by the DOJ, with a fellow council member. He pretty much demanded the city pay for the fire truck he bought as a "donation." Then there was the Great Sidewalk Debate of 2007 in which Esslinger basically forced the residents of a subdivision in Oshkosh to install sidewalks in their neighborhood and pay for it too. We could go on, but suffice it to say that ideological consistency usually plays second fiddle to his own sense of entitlement. Here are a couple examples: 1.) Esslinger changed his tune on various "pub fees" once he started running his own tavern. 2.) At the around the same time, Esslinger flip-flopped on a proposed downtown parking lot from which several competing pubs down the street from his own establishment stood to benefit. These are indicative someone who lacks the ability to thinks about the ramifications of his actions beyond himself.

Esslinger has a habit of even screwing up good-natured gestures, like the time he gave his friend and council member Dennis McHugh an envelope full of cash as a "retirement gift" during a council meeting and provided a very poor explanation as to why. Even McHugh looked a bit uncomfortable accepting the gift at the time. This wasn't just an instance of Esslinger being very oblivious. The cash was the leftover money collected by McHugh's friends to pay for a full-page ad in the local paper thanking McHugh for his years of service. There are very serious and legitimate questions as to the legality of the gift. There was no question that the whole episode looked sketchy.

He has a habit of watching opportunities to provide leadership pass him by. At times he's misused his office for political purposes. He has an inability to choose his battles. His relationship with the local media is abysmal. He has a habit of executing political duties vindictively and without class.

But Esslinger's most troubling quality is his almost pathological craving for acceptance. It's his defining characteristic. Rarely did a meeting go by during the decade he was on the council when Esslinger did not give a speech or cast a vote that appeared to beg for the approval of his friend and political mentor Dennis McHugh. People with business before knew that the quickest way to win Esslinger's support was to flatter, stroke his ego and, above all else, make him feel important. A lot politicians suffer from this desire, and in some this appetite for validation can be an asset that motivates them to do big things. But in others, and Esslinger definitely falls into this camp, it's a liability that leaves them susceptible to manipulation from folks like lobbyists and party leaders.

McHugh retired at the end of Esslinger's first year as mayor and in the second half of his only term Esslinger actually showed signs of maturity. There were far fewer distractions, much less grandstanding, and actual moments of genuine reflection and courage. Take, for example, his vote to approve a use permit for Oshkosh's first mosque. Even though the council meeting at which the vote took place was packed with very vocal supporters of the measure, it's hard to image those who did not voicing their opinions to any other council member. A lot of people attribute this evolution to Esslinger becoming a small business owner, and that may have certainly had a lot to do with it, but don't underestimate the impact McHugh's absence had on someone who is so impressionable. (Just to be clear: I'm not necessarily suggesting McHugh wouldn't have supported the mosque permit had he been on the council at the time. It's just a rare example of Esslinger not giving in to some of the more lamentable instincts of his base.)  

Instead of continuing his evolution after leaving office, Esslinger went back to the Well of Bad Influences when he teamed up with his friend Ben Schneider to create Oshkosh Area Politics, their execrable public access TV show. The conversations on OAP offer little insight except into the minds of two recovering politicians who were marginalized to the point of impotence and now blame everyone but themselves for their own failures in office.

Schneider now serves as McHugh's surrogate. It's not a step in the right direction. McHugh was more of a curmudgeon than an ideologically driven conservative, and not without his charm (recall the touching story he told about visiting the Grand Opera House with his wife before vote to authorize renovation funds). Schneider treats anyone who is not in perfect lockstep with him ideologically with condescension and derision. His inability to work with people he disagrees with is the stuff of local legend. Watching Esslinger and Schneider work themselves into a Berserker rage frenzy on OAP it's easy to see just how much of Schneider is rubbing off on Esslinger.

Needless to say, Paul Esslinger is the last thing Madison needs right now.

Ron Johnson's Political Career is Over

If you haven't read the damning Roll Call article on the dysfunction plaguing Ron Johnson's Washington Senate office, here you go. It's a masterpiece of the process genre of political reportage, which is a highfaluting way of saying it's juicy as hell.

A couple of thoughts on the implications:

1.) Ron Johnson's staff doesn't respect him.

The "big picture," over-aching theme that ties all the details of the Roll Call piece together is that Johnson's office is a terrible place to work. A legislator who gets pinned with that label enters into a slow motion death spiral: the good talent flees in the opposite direction and all that's left to hire is the marginal and/or inexperienced staffers. The Leftovers don't get the job done, which leads to more intra-office strife, more resignations/terminations, further damage to an office's reputation, etc. Wash. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

2.) It's clear that word on Capitol Hill is that Johnson's office is a dead end career-wise:

Though candidates don’t necessarily bring their entire campaign staffs with them once elected, it is very rare to have no carryover from the campaign, sources said. GOP sources not affiliated with the campaign or Johnson’s office said former staffers had indicated the Wisconsin Senator was frustrated with his operation in the days following the election and informed his staffers they would not be coming with him to D.C.

According to a Roll Call review of Federal Election Commission disclosure filings and the staff salary database LegiStorm, only four of the 42 salaried campaign staffers working in the last quarter of Johnson’s 2010 Senate campaign got jobs with the Senator. Johnson retained his state director, deputy state director, a caseworker and a receptionist from the campaign — all of whom are based in Wisconsin.

Actually, all of them are based here in Oshkosh ... and it's safe to say that none of them were part of the brain trust that navigated Johnson to victory. Either Johnson chose only to reward his close friends with jobs or he grew an ego and thought the hard part was over. Neither makes him look good and sends a message to potential staffers that career advancement is not based on merit, but Johnson's arbitrary whims.

Just look at Robert Duncan, who plays a supporting role in the drama:

[T]he situation in Johnson’s office has escalated in recent weeks. The top brass of the Senate Republican Steering Committee — the Conference’s conservative hub — have connected at least one Johnson legislative aide with another GOP Senate office, and sources indicated they may be helping others find jobs before they are asked to permanently clear their desks.

It's implied later in the piece that that staffer was Robert Duncan, who got a a $30,000+ raise when he jumped ship from the Senate GOP Secretary's office to become Johnson's legislative director. Where's he working now? Back at the Senate GOP' Secretary's office as a floor assistant, and not likely at the same salary he had as a senior staffer with Johnson.

Why would he jump ship? Because Johnson has no interest in crafting or advancing any legislation at all. Johnson spent his entire first year in the Senate drifting shiftlessly from one issue to the next, trying to find something to latch on to only to discover that doing requires substantial expertise which both the Senator and his office lack. There are usually two ways to remedy this situation. The first is putting in the work to become an expert on a given issue. Johnson's done nothing to show he's capable of this. The second is to use one's interpersonal talents to develop allies who do the dense policy work for you. This is usually called "basic workplace etiquette." Stunningly, Johnson seems incapable of even this:

While top Republican sources expressed exasperation at the internal turmoil in Johnson’s office, they also noted that the Wisconsin freshman has not been diligent in building relationships with other Senators within the Conference and has alienated himself by not reaching out more frequently to colleagues.

“He’s an interesting case study of someone who has talked more than he has listened, lectured more than he has developed relationships with his colleagues, and now he’s having a tough time because of that behavior in advancing his policy goals,” one senior GOP aide said. “It’s kind of like watching a temper tantrum by a 2-year-old in the middle of the grocery store.”

“The Senate is still about relationships, and he doesn’t seem to get that,” the aide continued.

Now that's a pull quote. From this we can infer:

3.) Johnson is not respected by his colleagues:

The Wisconsin Senator said recently that he would like to refocus his efforts on political messaging, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) has asked him to help coordinate strategy with the eventual GOP presidential nominee.

Translation: Go over to the kids table and leave the heavy lifting to the pros. It's as tactful a dressing down as you're ever going to read. It's polite and it excludes Johnson from real leadership responsibilities by including him in something much less important. What's even better, it gives Johnson a gig that he actually wants to do (see nos. 4 and 5).

And coordinate strategy...? There's a meaningless phrase if ever there was one! And yet it sounds important because it involves the GOP nominee. No one who has any clue how Washington really works would be bragging about this non-assignment to a reporter.

If Johnson thinks he's going to have a seat at the Romney strategy table this fall, he's in for a big surprise. In presidential election years, even Senators are nothing more than surrogates who either follow orders or don't get a ticket to the party. Shhhhhh! Don't tell Johnson this: it'll be much more fun when he finds this out the hard way this fall.

4.) Why the hell is Johnson answering these questions himself?

The playbook for stories about office dysfunction is pretty easy to run: the press secretary simply issues a statement dismissing the rumors as spurious and says that will be the last comment on the matter. The end. Johnson actually goes on the record here, which means if he does end up sacking any of his staffers in the near future he gets caught lying ... about firing people. That's a pretty silly thing to do when part of your messaging strategy is tying the President to unemployment.

Johnson's insistence on taking questions can mean one of two things: The first is that his staff thinks so little of him that they're willing to put him in a potentially damaging situation just to screw with him. The second is that Johnson thinks so little of his staff that he doesn't think they're competent enough to handle even the simplest of damage control chores. Either way, the office looks bad, and since no one's apparently leaving any time soon the problem is likely to persist.

5.) Johnson's delusional about his messaging skills. Johnson claims he wants to focus more of his office's attention on messaging, but that's really all he did last year in lieu of actual legislative activity:

Sources indicated that when Johnson came to Washington, he put a staff together like “any other Senator” but quickly realized that the day-to-day grind of legislating was not his forte. Johnson said last week that he wanted more of his office’s focus to be on building an effective messaging operation. Johnson’s legislative director, Robert Duncan, has already left the office.

Jesus, that's a damning indictment.

The problem is that Johnson is terrible at messaging. Just look at some of his greatest hits from last year. The very first thing Johnson did in January was take to the pages of the Wall Street Journal and announce his America's Choice program. Any idea what that was all about? No? Exactly. It was a substance-free messaging strategy designed to drive the national conversation during an election year. Did it work? Well, if you're just learning about it from this web site, then no, of course it didn't work.

Successful messengers are able to connect with media folk. If Johnson can't connect with his GOP colleagues, who are naturally disposed to sympathize with him, then he will have no prayer with the media, who are naturally disposed to treat men in power, like himself, with deep skepticism.

Johnson's desire to get more pub shouldn't come as a surprise to any Wisconsin voter. This is precisely what he was referring to during the 2010 campaign when he "committed himself to a 're-education of America.'" But Johnson confuses "messaging" (or possibly "re-education") with the rote recitation of talking points that demonstrate his depth of understanding on any issue is shallow at best. (See, for example, his "debate" over Obamacare with Zeke Emmanuel on Morning Joe in which he seems convinced that the length alone is an a priori proof that its absurdity.)

6.) Johnson is making the wrong friends.

Still, Johnson also has high-profile backers in GOP campaign circles. Foster Friess, the billionaire who until recently was a major backer of the presidential campaign of former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), told FOX News on Wednesday that Johnson should be on GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney’s short list of vice presidential candidates.

Now this graph is an example of how something's absurdity is self-evident.

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So what's it all mean? It means that Ron Johnson is being marginalized by his own party and doesn't even realize it. He's being pushed aside  by the party leadership where his voice will only be heard by the GOP fringe. Oh, he'll still get these silly puff pieces in conservative rags, and jokes like Freisse will talk him up like he's the Second Coming, but the reality is that Johnson is rapidly becoming one of the least effective members of the Senate.

It means his political career is essentially over. His awful first year has given him a well-earned reputation as someone who just doesn't understand how to play the game and is unwilling or unable to learn. Sooner or later, even the sycophants will stop kissing his ring and start ignoring him all together because they'll understand one important thing:

Ron Johnson is a lame duck Senator, effective today.

Johnson has no hope of winning a second term. Eventually, even he will realize this and just opt out of re-election. Or, and what's more likely, he'll just grow tired of being a Senator and choose not to bother.

But here's a third option: Johnson has essentially staked his career on the failure of Obamacare, though he's done little more, so far as we can tell, than a segment on Morning Joe denouncing it. If the Supreme Court does strike down ACA, there's little reason for him to hang around the U.S. Senate. Don't be surprised if Johnson resigns before the end of his term, especially if there's an opportunity for a Republican governor to appoint another Republican to fill the remainder of his term.  It would be a fitting end to what's proving to be a completely wasted Senate term.

Ron Johnson vs. Leon Panetta

Not the Senator's finest hour:

More here and here.