And suddenly, after cutting millions to Wisconsin schools and social safety net programs, GOP Gov. Scott Walker wants voters to think of how this awful recall fight is hurting kids and old people.
MSNBC’s Willie Geist asked Walker: “You find yourself in the middle of this, mired in a recall election. The latest Marquette poll has you 47 approve, 47 percent disapproves, split right down the middle in the state of Wisconsin. This could be a long fight for you — a special election scheduled to take place in June, a primary in May. How distracted are you from doing the business of Wisconsin by trying to essentially win re-election in the middle of your term?” (Note: The May and June dates are not yet officially declared by state election officials, but are the likely outcome of the administrative process.)
“Well, we’re focused,” Walker responded, “but it’s a huge distraction, not just for me, for the legislature. I mean, it’s $9 million of taxpayers’ money just to run this. Think about the number of kids we could help, think of the number of seniors we could help in our state with $9 million that we didn’t have to waste on this — this frivolous recall election.
And after taking big money from the Koch Brothers to save his bacon, who have sworn to help Walker destroy the state’s public unions, he has this to say about outside money:
“But really, I mean, in the end, I think it’s amazing, after a year of being attacked by out of state special interests, the tens of millions of dollars that were poured in, the fact that we’re ahead of any of the Democrats in the race I think bodes well for the election.”
Yes, because there’s no outside money coming to help Walker. Not a dime, right? Hey, you know what? That $9 million Walker’s complaining about? That’s about what he’s gotten from Koch to run ads in the state so far. Funny how that works.
Mendacious ass.
redshirt
Just a poor country Governor, trying to make his way in this cruel world, beset on all sides by the inequities of Lying Liberals and the Lies they Lie (which they’ll tell you are facts, but you know liberals!).
Feel good gubernatorial story of the day!
scav
Leave me alone or the cops ‘n’ kids get it!
Brachiator
Wow. This guy has quite the pair of cojones.
Because…all together now…Things go better with Koch.
Still, I wonder why this appears to be a close call. This guy is a chump.
MattF
Accusing your opponents of the things you do– I think Walker must be getting advice from Karl Rove. “It’s simple” says Karl, “and it drives them crazy.”
Bruuuuce
So worried about the money, Governor? Resign and save the state the trouble of recalling you.
Dickhead.
noodler
It was so great when Mika hit him with the teaser “Coming up next Gov Scott Walker” and the remote camera shot, and he was sleeping. For a good second and a half.
Benjamin Franklin
So, the cost to the ‘chirrun’ is his reason for not seeking an extension to sig verification.
I smell the scent of Convention Delegates returning to the compassionate conservative/Leave no child behind platform to dove-tail with their anti-choice brick-bat.
eric
The opening act for Transvaginal Ultrasound will be Mendacious Ass. Can’t wait.
bemused
I’m sure it’s safe to bet that no one asked him about his six or more top aides under investigation.
goethean
Fire Walker with me.
terraformer
Man, this recall election is so important. If these nincompoops can do this in Wisconsin, arguably the region that birthed the progressive movement, then that is just going to be huge. We’ve gotta win this one. Got to.
El Cid
I assume he means that he could have helped all those kids with tax cuts, since having the government spend all that confiscated money on things like government schools or government food aid would actually harm the kids.
Scott
God, this fuckhead needs to be in prison.
Paul in KY
Kay, is he polling in front? I would have thought that with the numbers of signatures, he was toast.
danimal
I’m quite certain there’s a misquote in the story.
FTFY
ETA: Looks like El Cid got there first!
jibeaux
Ain’t gonna be frivolous if you’re recalled, Scott.
Your move, WI.
Paul in KY
@Paul in KY: I mean’t Zandar up there. Forgot who wrote this one.
piratedan
@El Cid: hey, he’s busy trying to rebuild the Wisconsin economy by the use of “child labor”, because if the schools are closed, well those kids just can’t stay home and read the bible or play video games all day, exercise is good, so forced labor may be even better…..
kideni
@Paul in KY: There was a poll out last week that had his approval rating going down from the previous month (from 50 [which was only that high because they’d oversampled conservatives] to 47) and his negatives were up. The declared Democrats aren’t as widely known around the state, so for most of them, “don’t know enough to say” gets the highest number. In one-to-one match-ups, I think the Dems generally did ok, but again, it’s early. Walker’s policies all poll really badly.
And this morning Walker declared that he wouldn’t challenge the petitions (see TPM). I’ll be interested to see what their game plan is, and I suspect it’ll involve a lot of lawsuits. The law that allows raising unlimited amount of money for recall challenges was partially meant to allow people under recall to gather forces to challenge petitions, but they chose not to use their millions to get the job done. Instead, they’re throwing up ads and filing lawsuits.
For me, at least, this means I won’t need to go across town for the shifts I signed up for to challenge the petition challenges. Now I can use some of that time to go back to the party office closer to me to enter petition data so that they’ll be able to find everyone who signed once the dates are set.
cmorenc
@Zandar:
The more aggressive GOP politicos are, the more brazenly shamelessness about how current pronouncements of position or attack on democrats compares with their own past pronouncements or behavior. They’re counting on several factors to make this work, on balance, clearly in their favor:
1) short span of attention and memory of detail on the part of the public;
2) insufficiently diligent interest or work-ethic by the MSM to pursue or catch them on more than a fraction of hypocritical contradictions;
3) if caught in a potentially damaging contradiction, the MSM can often be quickly, easily distracted by a new, shiny object. Distract attention toward another shiny object and change the subject.
4) lots of GOP pronouncements are intended primarily for consumption by their base, not by outsiders, and their base has a deaf ear for potential contradictions/hypocracy. As to outsiders, even if progressive-friendly sources succeed in getting MSM attention momentarily focused on the contradiction, most of the time if it’s ignored, MSM will move on to something else before it can have much impact. If not, see point #3 above.
In short, the more aggressive GOP politicos don’t care whatever for accuracy or truth, but in true sociopathic fashion, only what they calculate they can get away with. Which, from experience, is a lot.
Paul in KY
@kideni: Thank you. Appreciate your info.
El Cid
@piratedan: There’s no reason the kids can’t read the Bible while mopping up at McDonalds.
cckids
@El Cid: Hello, that is what audiobooks are for. You can get the bible that way, I hear. Win-win. Now, if only the Newt can corner the market on selling the bible as audiobook, it will be a trifecta.
James E. Powell
Question for anyone who knows the ground in Wisconsin. The people who like Walker. Do they like him because of something he has done or will do? Or do they like him because he pisses off liberals? What is his big claim to fame? How does he have any support above 27%?
kideni
@James E. Powell: I’m in Madison, so I’m surrounded by Satan worshipers and can’t report much direct response from people who like him, but there are a few trends that I’ve seen in media accounts, blog comments, etc. Above all, Wisconsin is purple: it has a good Progressive history, but it’s also the state that brought you Joe McCarthy.
Things are volatile right now. For the last several weeks, anything to do with recall stuff was coming from Republicans, who have been pushing their narratives of fraudulent signatures and badmouthing the recall as being pushed by whiners (who hate children). The Dems fight back when they can, but there are so many news outlets who don’t even bother to get a rebuttal, it’s appalling. Now that we’re coming to the end of the challenges, and you add to that the redistricting lawsuits and the growing John Doe case that’s hitting everyone who’s ever worked for Walker and may finally take in Walker himself, things may change.
Some of what’s going on is that the counties surrounding Milwaukee, along with a few other parts of the state, are hotbeds of seething right-wing anger; a lot of those people can’t be reached, and their numbers more or less balance out the left-wing nutjobs in Madison and Milwaukee. Those are indeed the people who like him because he pisses off liberals. They hate and fear people who aren’t like them (these counties were largely populated by white flight); they’re susceptible to narratives that pit groups against each other; they resent people who have things they don’t, even if it’s something like a state worker who makes thousands of dollars less in salary than a private-sector worker, because that state worker has a solvent pension and somewhat better health care benefits. Many of them are wealthy, although a good number of them are nowhere near there.
There are a fair number of people who just don’t like the idea of a recall. They confuse it with impeachment and think it shouldn’t happen unless the person has committed malfeasance (the constitutional language that allows for recalls identifies exactly the situation we’re facing: our governor and representatives aren’t governing in the way they said they would, and we don’t feel they’re representing our interests, so we’re making use of this democratic remedy). These people seem to feel that the whole process is wrong and that we should just suck it up and wait until the next election to get rid of him. Some of them are infected by both-sides-do-it-itis and think the Dems did the same thing when they had the gov’s office and legislature (they did not).
Some people aren’t paying much attention. They don’t know many people who were directly affected by the cuts. To some extent, we haven’t yet felt the full effect of the various cuts, because a lot of municipalities and school districts were able to move funds around and apply remaining stimulus funds to shore up gaps (thank you, Obama!) so that this year wasn’t so bad, but pretty much everyone’s saying that next year is going to be terrible. They may be swayed by ads and slanted news stories claiming that things are getting better, such that even though their own property taxes went up, they hear that most people saved tons of money, so they think that things are on the upswing. They also hear all the talk about how this is just so expensive.
It’s also an issue of who gets polled. Marquette University has been and will continue to poll on this, and their polling has all the pitfalls of any poll. Their first poll was heavily tilted toward conservatives (mostly landlines, polling more in areas that tend to be conservative, underpolling union households, etc.), so the numbers looked ok for Walker if you didn’t look too deeply. A more recent poll, which came out a week or so ago, showed Walker losing ground, and the John Doe case is on people’s minds.
Those are a few things I can think of. I don’t know if that helps or not.