WI GOP riven by election deniers!
The Wisconsin Republican party has been infected with a virus. It may yet prove to have originated in a change of function laboratory in Wuhan. More likely, it originated in Washington D.C. or Mar-a-Lago FL. The sickness expresses itself as a bad acid trip every time a Republican loses an election.
It’s never our fault. We lose an election and the deniers fixate on some nefarious algorithm, duplicitous but unnamed election clerks, or that invincible puller of invisible strings, George Soros. Not all Republicans are that goofy. Hats off to Brad Schimel for acknowledging very plainly that he just got fewer votes than his opponent. Yet social media crackles today with all the old familiar conspiracy theories. Thursday, Tulsi Gabbard fed the frenzy by saying voting machines “are vulnerable to hacking.”
“It’s already been proven. A 12-year-old girl from Ohio hacked the Dominion computers seven or eight years ago and showed how election fraud was easy as pie,” writes one Facebook expert, without attribution. If so, Fox News should demand repayment of the $787 million in legal damages it’s paying to Dominion.
Fighting the last defeat
There is something very sick and disordered about the so-called Patriot wing of my Republican party who praise Mike Gableman and damn Robin Vos. Former state supreme court justice Gableman just lost his license to practice law because of his scatter-brained inquisition into the 2020 election.
Speaker Vos has maintained a Republican majority in the state legislature lo these many years in a purple state. The Speaker acknowledged he had no power to overturn a presidential election, which has been thoroughly vetted. His Republicans enshrined voter I.D. into the state constitution. Yet this paranoia surfaced in our Facebook feed today:
Cursing the darkness
Vos-hating election deniers are gunning for Second District Republican chairman Billie Johnson tomorrow at the caucus. One of them filed a complaint to the WI Office of Lawyer Regulation against Erik Olsen, the party’s candidate for Congress, for describing their tactics (a portion of which):
The Decertify group within [the Dane County GOP] wanted to pass resolutions censuring Vos. … [They] raised constant procedural objections to the board’s efforts to take actions, making it difficult to get things done. — Erik Olson
Saturday’s Second District caucus can’t be worse than the Eighth District’s in Green Bay March 15 when off-duty sheriff’s deputies needed to restore order before it elected an election denier. So raucous was the caucus that TV news did an exposé.
“That caucus was one of the most disgusting, shameful things I have ever witnessed in all my time in politics. We could have [had] a riot, people could get hurt. It was mob rule.” — Kirt Johnson, chairman of the Kewaunee County GOP
On top of all this, Turning Point USA is trying to take over the state Republican party and oust Brian Schimming. Someone should ask Charlie Kirk why Democrats now run Arizona after he took over the party.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: We Republicans spend more time litigating lost elections than we do trying to win the next election. Stupid and vengeful is not a good look.
High-profile Republicans like Ron Johnson, Tommy Thompson, and Derrick Van Orden need to spend a little of their well earned political capital and acknowledge what Paul Ryan, Reid Ribble, and Mike Gallagher already know — that Trump lost Wisconsin fair and square in 2020. Vicki McKenna and Dan O’Donnell, too. Pandering isn’t working.
11 responses to “Our own worst enemy”
I always keep in mind Robert Conquest’s 3rd Law of Politics: “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”
I agree he had no power to overturn elections, but he does have the power to sponsor and pass a fair fetal murder act bill and help get other chamber on board so that they can once and for all make Evers Pass or Veto. That single act would help rally the wi gop from being seen as extremists and ones that do believe in exceptions. This is the biggest losing issue for wi gop since us supreme court pushed it back on the states and all i gop does is sit on their hands waiting as losses pile up. It has led to election of a powerful extremist wi supreme court that will act as a legislative body. Get it together wi gop soon.
The Squire is spot on. One thing you can say about the Democrats is that they stay together, in most cases.
Local elections took a beating in Madison as well. The far left was out honking for their favorite people, nobody was out helping the moderates.
Squire, you have met the enemy and he is you.
” We Republicans spend more time litigating lost elections than we do trying to win the next election. ” Then you relitigate the 2020 election.
Your Party doesn’t stand for anything. It can’t lead, it wont follow and it can’t get out of the way.
Above all… it won’t fight.
Nice opening paragraph though.
Who is relitigating? I am accepting the verdict of the American people. Today’s Wall Street Journal:
“President Trump campaigned on ending lawfare and the “weaponization” of the federal government, but he’s siccing it now on his perceived enemies by name, ordering federal investigations and potentially prosecutions. This is a broken promise, an abuse of power, and another twist down the spiral of politicized law enforcement. Trump’s first target is Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, until two weeks after the 2020 election. Mr. Trump fired him because Mr. Krebs and his agency kept knocking down claims of phantom voter fraud. Mr. Trump hasn’t forgotten, and he’s now turning the fantasy that he really beat President Biden into a revenge narrative. His order claims Mr. Krebs “falsely and baselessly denied that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen.”
You are in a hole.
Does that mean you are an election denier, too? Is that a requirement of MAGA membership?
Sound of shovel in dirt in the dark.
Once again losing by 82% is perfectly acceptable. Next Dane county number will fall to 15%. Maly calls this progress. Wonder what the genius party members will come up with next. More raffles and beer hall hijinks to help save the Titanic?
[…] The Republican Party of Wisconsin is cracking down on anti-Vos election deniers and took a sideways slap at Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, which is seen as attempting a hostile takeover. RPW announced an emergency change in bylaws Monday, coming after the fractious 8th Congressional District caucus in Green Bay April 5. (“Our own worst enemy”) […]