Scott Walker - The Turning Point

[Joe McCarthy] was not known to have any unusual mandate from the voters of Wisconsin, and in any case Wisconsin, though an ornament of the republic, is not quite a first-rate power in politics.
- Senator Joe McCarthy, by Richard Rovere (1959, p 23)

Eau Claire paper 02/24/2014, story here

Scott Walker is quite talented in his own way and has been successful in Wisconsin. He's a good match for the state or, better put, part of the state, a master of right wing backlash politics, and this is the key to his success here and elsewhere. Busting the public unions in 2011 and then withstanding the demonstrations and recall have made him, just about literally, a right wing rock star. To get a sense of his appeal, you have to understand the seething, visceral hatred of unions felt by these right wingers, all too obvious to us on the recall trail a couple years ago.

Look at what US Senator Bob Corker has done in Tennessee, threatening all around if those Volkswagen workers went union in their representation election a few days ago. It's almost funny, because worker representation is built into Volkswagen, and the worker leaders there have made it clear that Republican wingnuts are putting further investment in the South in jeopardy. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has not flinched from such ramifications, ranting she'd rather no investment than unionized companies in South Carolina. This from the state which did all they could to destroy the United States so they could keep their slaves. And don't say that's old history - until recently they flew the stars and bars over the state capitol (or do they still?). Till this day they have counties named after Confederate leaders - even Charleston County is named after that arch-numbskull Charles I, the most noted pillar of reaction in the English speaking world till the time of Macaulay 150 years after Oliver Cromwell and the boys chopped off his head. William Faulkner (!): "“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

(Update 5/8/2014: In March 2014, elements of the Republican Party of Wisconsin officially endorsed the right to secede and nullify federal laws - here is the resolution passed by one of the district conventions and forwarded by the resolutions committee to the convention of the entire party in May 2014. Fifty Republican members of the assembly (almost all of them) denounced the "worthless resolution" forthrightly after it was widely mocked by national observers, also noting that passing it would be disastrous for electoral prospects. The resolution was buried at the convention, but another one demanding that legislators nullify Obamacare got 145 votes to 303 against, probably a good measure of the crazy in the Wisconsin GOP, a term used in the headline in the last link from a business publication.)

The old fault line is pronounced in Wisconsin, perhaps the most divided state in the union, and that's saying something in such a generally polarized national environment. Wisconsin has a powerful progressive tradition going back to Fighting Bob La Follette and his associates who got going in earnest about 1900 and by 1911 passed the second workers' compensation law in the country, and a model one. Social Security was hatched by a commission led by Professor Edwin Witte of the University of Wisconsin in 1934 - there's still a Witte Hall on the Madison campus. There's the Wisconsin Idea, that the purpose of the university is to help the entire state in every way possible, that the boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state. There's the John R Commons school of labor studies at UW that led to workers' comp and so many other things. Hell, AFSCME was founded here in 1932, it started life as the Wisconsin State Employees Association.

But there's also Senator Joe McCarthy, he too was popular during his tenure 1947 - 1957 and managed to get elected twice, the second time on the most retrograde platform imaginable. The Birchers and assorted whack jobs who loved Tail Gunner Joe never disappeared and Scott Walker and his supporters represent that right wing id with a vengeance. Walker's genius is to effectively channel the impulse. He has a sixth sense about that way of thinking and those voters, how to talk to them and reach them. There's a certain strain of passive aggression he's good at, and his people respond to it, he communicates directly with their lizard brains. The kind of passive aggression where you lie directly to someone's face and then sanctimoniously wring your hands in dismay when they tell you to go f*ck yourself. Look at our two current US Senators to get a sense of the range of Wisconsin politics - teabagger extraordinaire Ron Johnson, elected in 2010, and Tammy Baldwin, elected in 2012, a left wing lesbian from the People's Republic of Madison (her home is about a mile from mine, down the street from where the kids went to school).

Wisconsin is stable demographically and politically, unlike (say) Virginia, which not all that long ago was right up there with South Carolina as massive resistors to school desegregation, now trending blue and increasingly so due to massive demographic change in the northern part of the state. None of that here. One structural problem is Milwaukee, for decades the center of successful "sewer socialism", but for some time now being systematically choked purple by the state legislature. Like Los Angeles, they did not even control their own police force for decades due to Milwaukee-hating legislatures, and they got a high-handed police force like LA's. Mass transit has been stymied, frustrating normal patterns of near suburb formation - Milwaukee is often cited as the most segregated city in the United States. Walker himself played a signal role in defeating mass transit expansion when he turned back nearly $1 billion from the federal government to build a fast rail line between Milwaukee and Madison. Perfect! Screwing Madison and Milwaukee both, not to mention inner city blacks and union workers, who have to be exempted from state anti-union provisions as a condition of receiving such federal funds. Like Nikki Haley, the jobs and economic development are secondary as long as we can stick it to our real enemies.

The funny thing about guvmint-hatin' Walker is that he's worked for the government since boyhood - as state legislator, Milwaukee County Executive, and now governor. In the state Assembly he was a protege of majority leader David Prosser, the now disgraced (to half the state) Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who couldn't help getting physical with a female judge who wanted more deliberation before approving Act 10, the legislation destroying our public unions. Somehow (Prosser explained) his hands just ended up around her neck, it was really kind of a defensive measure. Compare Walker to his Democratic opponent this coming November, home grown scion of Wisconsin industry Mary Burke, who has worked mightily to expand the family business and brought hundreds if not thousands of jobs to the state. Walker promised to bring 250,000 jobs to Wisconsin in the 2010 election, no doubt doing simple calculations on the number of jobs to be expected naturally as population and a depressed economy expanded. His knuckle-headed policies have reduced employment in the state though; he has actually managed to suppress normal growth and is certain not to meet his own goal or even come close. Who could've predicted? Oh, wait. Wisconsin is now (2/24/2014) 37th in the nation in private job creation, an improvement, because it had been in the high 40s earlier in his term! Too bad Scott isn't running against himself.

I never felt Walker was ready to move to the national stage. It's been obvious he wanted to, considering his book Unintimidated, the perfect title to rally the always besieged wingers, and as a bonus, ghost written by notorious torture apologist Marc Thiessen. Walker has probably spent as much time out of state as in, appearing before all those adoring conservatives, scoring donations and improving his profile. Not that he'll ever hurt for money - the Koch boys drowned the state in cash during the recall. Walker is just too provincial, too Wisconsin. His entire play is to polarize massively, pretend he isn't when acting in any official capacity, but then sell the act to the right and attempt to profit on it. It's pretty transparent and I don't see the country buying it. God knows it's been done before, but Scott Walker is no Richard Nixon. He's no Chris Christie for that matter, whose similar act has now been derailed by Bridgegate, but who (love him or hate him) has political skills of a different order than our boy.

Think of recent presidents - Obama, Clinton, Reagan. They knew how to communicate at the human level to millions, they had the spark. Even George W Bush was a hale and hearty fellow in a village idiot sort of way, someone you'd like to have a beer with. Walker has this soulless affect that is kind of striking. Factor out the partisan content of that all you want, there is something weird about how this guy communicates, the dead eyes. There's obvious skill and real discipline and ability to stay on point and he's won all his elections so far with that, but view this video of Walker being interviewed yesterday by Chris Wallace. Call it disciplined messaging if you like, but Wallace called it not answering the question to Walker's face ("Did you know there was a private email account?"). Walker looked shocked; hey - this has all been addressed, it's a Democratic plot, let's talk about something else. It wasn't very deft. To repeat, this is Chris f*cking Wallace of Fox News, a Republican partisan at a Republican network. It's almost as if they've already discounted Walker, as if they want to get rid of him before he causes the movement more embarrassment. Good lord, right at his national debut, I thought it would take longer than that.

Charlie Pierce calls Walker "the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin". I still remember the out-of-state Koch thugs who came to town with Sarah Palin that spring day in 2011 and the welcome we gave them. They had necklaces that said "Americans for Prosperity Security" and ordered us off our own capitol grounds until the Capitol police told them to back off. We surged forward and made so much noise that the wingers started melting away. The arms-linked line of off-duty Cops for Labor separating us would move one big step forward every time room freed up. Money and TV always count in elections, but less so by the day and maybe less so in independent-minded Wisconsin. The Kochs may be approaching diminishing returns here, every extra dollar hurting more than helping their cause.

All the emails are coming from one concluded grand jury. There were six convictions, one of Walker's aides being a child molester and another (or was it the same one) caught stealing from the widows and orphans of veterans. There's a second ongoing secret grand jury, and it has to be casting a pall on Walker's national ambitions - who knows what will come out? Don't forget the fake Koch call and the Diane Hendricks divide and conquer lovefest video. I was hoping this would develop a little further just to see the oppo ads. Walker's hope was to keep the Wisconsin magic alive, win re-election in November 2014, then catapult that to a national role. It looks like exactly the opposite is unfolding; namely, the negative national attention and collapse will hurt his prospects inside the state. I'd say bad timing for Walker, except this was going to get worse for him and the Republicans the longer it went on.

Walker has profited from an inept and partisan press in Wisconsin. The two biggest newspapers in the state have been in his corner and these papers have a geographical reach and prestige belying their circulation. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has been an atrocious right wing rag and they own outlets that blanket the Milwaukee area with poisonous talk radio. The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison always has been a Republican and conservative mouthpiece. The State Journal's circulation stabilized when they inherited the subscribers of the liberal Capital Times a few years ago when they folded up the print edition, but is now pretty steadily declining at about 6% per year and will soon be under 100,000 on Sundays, down from ~150,000 as recently as 2007. They almost relish defying this liberal community and will soon cease to exist as a viable political force. No doubt this thought is inspiring both papers at this late date to start openly questioning Walker. Better late than never and though dying, they're not dead; so this might be one of the positive practical outcomes of the current brouhaha, to finally light a fire under the local press.

Keep in mind Walker won the recall by 7%, and that with the support of so much of the press and the blizzard of Koch money, five times what the Dems spent or something. Plus, there were voters who just didn't like the idea of recalling Walker. He hadn't then been accused of illegal activities, let him serve out his term (I personally heard this from many people when collecting recall signatures).

The Democrats have won the Presidential race in Wisconsin since 1988, but it was close in 2000 and 2004, closest in the nation one of those years. Obama won by 14% in 2008 and by 7% in 2012, bracketing Walker's 6% victory in 2010. We wouldn't be talking about him now if Wisconsin governors were elected in presidential years.

The email trove reveals some rancid chain emails circulated among Walker's top lieutenants, including chief of staff Tom Nardelli. Racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-disabled, anti-Latino, and so on, they are almost a work of art in the amount of offensiveness jammed into a compact package. "How true!", opines one key recipient. This is who Walker surrounds himself with and a lot of people would like to know if he received those emails, if that's the kind of environment he fosters in the office. Racist emails reflect poorly on Walker editorializes the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram today and Walker can expect more of that. Even (perhaps especially) in Wisconsin, conservatism veering far to the right is one thing, outright bigotry another. Walker brags about attracting the "Obama-Walker voter" - they exist but are evaporating by the minute.

This bum and his supporters were so focused on crushing our unions that they didn't even notice that their targets were already almost dead and politically impotent. That their new masters are all those young, dark, gay people they hate so much who are about to consign them to the dustbin of history.

Mike Bertrand

Madison, Wisconsin
February 24, 2014

Update (6/20/2014): Well this is special. The wheels of Justice are grinding slow, but they are grinding. Shown here is today's Google search for criminal scheme. Yesterday the Seventh Circuit released a number of documents from John Doe 2, the in-state probe of Republican irregularities during the recall elections in 2011-2012. "John Doe prosecutors allege Scott Walker at center of 'criminal scheme'" headlines the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I'd just about lost hope and even now the criminals are accusing prosecutors of illegal behavior; it's like Dick Cheney accusing Obama of bad judgement on the Iraq war.

In other Walker-related news yesterday, Wisconsin was 37^th last year in private-sector job creation, last in the upper midwest. Forget about 250,000 jobs, what Walker promised - maybe half that if we're lucky. This is almost becoming comical, considering how Walker monomaniacally pushed this point in his campaign in 2010 and soon after - Wisconsin is open for business, baby! And all on top of Alec MacGillis's excellent profile in the New Republic the other day, titled The Unelectable Whiteness of Scott Walker: A journey through the poisonous, racially divided world that produced a Republican star. His main point was that Walker was gestated and nourished in the toxic brew of Milwaukee's poisonous politics, a racist cesspool unique in the country, a cocoon fatally injuring someone like Walker aspiring to higher office - he learned all the wrong lessons and is literally incapable of understanding broader politics in the United States today.

But back to the criminal scheme, that too is affording some entertainment and with any luck, some material relief in a few months - the Marquette poll showed Democratic challenger Mary Burke tied with Walker at 46% in May. There are a whole lot of dead-enders in Wisconsin, but who wants to be associated with a criminal, to have someone like that run your state? Democrats and recallers were rigorous to avoid any hint of coordination and it was a big pain. You'd call someone on a phone bank, an identified Democratic, pro-union voter, and they'd read you the riot act because it was the fourth call they'd gotten that day - none of the groups shared lists, it wasn't allowed. I remember once on the street in Baraboo we recallers ran into some canvassers from the Democratic Party - each little group smiled and walked around each other with hardly a word. We'd have been more expressive, if not friendly, with Walkerites. But not the Republicans. A key figure in the influential, big-money-dispensing, ultra-right Club for Growth doubled as a trusted Walker lieutenant. The same f*cking guy! It's beyond coordination, they're literally the same. That's why the prosecutors' hair is on fire.

The prosecutors lay out the case here and it's compelling, based on long-term Wisconsin law and practice (two of the five DAs behind it are Republicans). The money quote (p 12):

On September 30, 2013, the John Doe Judge issued a subpoena duces tecum (hereafter subpoenas) to the respective movants requiring the production of documents related to the criminal scheme of R. J. Johnson, Deborah Jordahl, Governor Scott Walker and Friends of Scott Walker ("FOSW") to utilize and direct 501(c)(4) organizations, as well as other political committees.

The John Doe was strictly secret until now, but the right wing targets have been leaking all along, even admitting it. The Wall Street Journal is one of their venues and a few weeks ago they came out with two editorials blistering Walker because (evidently) the Club for Growth thought he was going to flip on them. The divergence between Walker on the one hand and all these shadowy right-wing groups on the other (including of course the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity) is one of the intriguing aspects of the story, raising the specter that Walker is a stalking horse for undermining campaign finance laws nationally, possibly at his own expense.

The Club for Growth challenged the John Doe in both state and federal court with some success. Federal Judge Rudolph Randa of Milwaukee ordered the probe halted and that all evidence be destroyed. He said that Walker and the right-wing groups were "circumventing" election law, as if that was a good thing. This fellow is quite a piece of work - Koch-connected, Walker-connected, the works. Justice the Scalia way.

Randa was overruled in short order by the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, at least the part about destroying evidence. It was a judge on the Seventh Circuit who released the documents yesterday and evidently the geniuses at the Club for Growth thought that was a dandy idea, the sunshine would stop these oppressors from further trampling on the free speech rights of good Americans. Yeah, you bet, you want yourself and politicians you favor associated with the term criminal scheme in the public mind. I almost hope the probe will be quashed at this point, guaranteeing the taint of conspiracy forever.

Another consummate irony is how Walker tripped himself up, like Nixon or Christie. Hubris certainly, but in Walker's case a sort of ignorance, a circumscribed and limited experience despite all the success. He always projects a calm composure even when acting like a wild-eyed radical, when telling the pretend-Koch caller (for example) that he considered planting agents provocateurs among the recallers. Or when he matter-of-factly solicited some ads from that caller or emailed Karl Rove that R. J. Johnson was the point man for coordination. We hoped we'd get him in an election. What we actually did was rattle him enough to act stupidly and illegally.