Brew City Brawler

WI GOP: A History of Voter Suppression

So how will Wisconsin Republicans try to rig the state electorate in their favor? Will they try to kill same-day registration, even though Gov. Scott Walker has sorta-kinda distanced himself from that? Will they up the ante on voter ID? Will the sabotage the GAB? Will they go for the cherry on top and rig the electoral college to reflect the vote in gerrymandered districts? Or do they have another secret bomb they want to drop?

Tough to say, but rest assured they'll try something. And odds are good that whatever they do will either make it harder for black people to vote or make their votes count for less. After all, it's been a dream of theirs for more than a decade.

Wisconsin Republicans insist that cracking down on voting, whether its voter ID or killing same-day registration, is all about ensuring integrity at the polls. They can't prove there's a problem substantial enough to justify these actions -- but trust them, there are problems out there! Glenn Grothman said just that. Fortunately, their voter suppressing compatriots in other states have been more candid: The laws are about suppressing turnout. Oh: and voter fraud is a myth.

Now one could be generous and say Republicans want to suppress the black vote because of the way they vote, not because of the color of their skin. However, there's no question this issue motivates the Republican base because, let's face it, the Republican base in Wisconsin -- many of them first or second generation white flighters from Milwaukee to Waukesha -- have less than complimentary views of black people. And I would suggest that believing, without evidence, that lots of black people vote illegally  (a view regularly promulgated by Charlie Sykes as he constantly complains about voter fraud in the "central city") is racist on its face.

This case of racial paranoia is nothing new among white people in Wisconsin. Back during the 50s, some white folks speculated that billboards were going up in the south directing black people to move to Milwaukee. During the 1960s and early 1970s white flight was rampant.

Tommy Thompson won his first gubernatorial election by insisting that Milwaukee was a welfare magnet for black people from Chicago who were apparently to shiftless to work but such shrewd economic actors that they would uproot their  lives and families to move north. Thompson's revolting claims were a longstanding urban legend among racist white folks and while many conservatives uphold the "welfare magnet" line to this day, all available research said it was not true.

Put in this light, the Wisconsin GOP's obsession with suppressing the black vote has a long-running and shameful pedigree.

The push to make it harder for black people to vote in Wisconsin has been going on for 12 years. As we wait for the catastrophe that will be the next session of the Wisconsin legislature, I thought it would make sense to provide a handy timeline.

John Menard: BS artist, crybaby, crony capitalist

Hey, lookit: John Menard is whining that big gummint is interfering with his business plans. Menards whining seems dubious at best. 

That's how Menard has rolled for years. As in six years ago, when Menard told the transparent lie that he had cancelled a seasonal warehouse in Wisconsin due to DNR regulations and was moving the jobs out of state.

For all the whining he does about big gummint, he never gives it a shout out for all the corporate welfare and taxpayer subsidies he gets thrown his way.

Maryann Sumi unlikely to run

I'm hearing from two well-connected sources that as of now Maryann Sumi is unlikely to run for the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. My understanding is that she began backing away following Christian Schneider's hit job on her in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and has told people she didn't want to run if it was going to be that nasty (so, well done by a proven ethically challenged columnist). That's somewhat surprising given Sumi was no stranger to vicious attacks.

And it's also disappointing given she would be an excellent candidate. Indeed, one source told me that polling showed Sumi would beat corporate pawn Roggensack by 3 points.

There's still hope that Sumi will run. If not, bring it Ed Fallone.

 

Roggensack spoke to "True the Vote" allied group

Interesting. Back on May 17, Supreme Court of Wisconsin Justice Patience Roggensack spoke to the not-very-non-partisan-sounding Suburban Republican Women Club along with soon-to-be-failed Senatorial candidate Jeff Fitzgerald. The topic:  "Elect Them or Appoint Them and the Race for the Senate." Roggensack "discussed the history and reasons behind electing judicial representatives versus appointing them." 

All very well and fine, thought it's worth noting that in October  SRWC hosted Dan Hunt from True the Vote: 

Dan Hunt is on the front lines protecting the integrity of our electoral process -- believed to be limited for a variety of reasons, including: A lack of citizen awareness, involvement, and adequate training. 

True the Vote was notorious for its voter fraud conspiracy theories, misleading poll watching training materials, and dirty tricks.  Not surprisingly, SRWC was one of the groups encouraging people to be poll watchers and is affiliated with the voter fraud paranoiacs We're Watching Wisconsin Elections. 

So ... what does Roggensack, who may cast a deciding vote on Voter ID, think of the paranoiac ravings of the group she spoke to?

 

Does Scott Walker think rape babies are God's plan?

So apparently the lesson Wisconsin Republicans are taking from the 2012 election is they must double down on a far right agenda, whether it's making it tougher for black people to vote or clamp down on a woman's right to choose. 

Quick, somebody should ask Scott Walker if he think rape babies are part of God's plan. His reply might be slicker than, say, Todd Akin's, but the position is the same. And it's a position that most people -- that is outside the far right fringe -- find abhorrent.

Karl Rove was a big fan of same-day voter registration

Because he wants to make it harder for black people to vote, Scott Walker wants to kill same-day voter registration.

Rep. Robin Vos, whose soon-to-be-ex-wife voted fraudulently, in a manner that would not have been caught by voter ID, wants to kill it too.

Sen. Glenn Grothman does as well.

As does the increasingly unhinged Sen. Alberta Darling, drifting gently into a racist haze in which Mitt Romney lost because of voter fraud.

Thing is, once upon a time, Republicans had no problem with same-day voter registration, which has been on the books for more than 30 years. That is, until it was demonstrated that the Democrats could mount a superior ground game. 

The turning point was 2004. Karl Rove, the evil not-really-a-genius behind Bush, was very excited about the GOP's ability to mobilize the troops on election day.

From a reporter's notebook at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, covering Rove giving a pep talk to Wisconsin GOPers (date: 9/3/04):

Rove talked about the campaign he envisions playing out in Wisconsin, crisply, I might add, since he's playing town crier all across this vertical jungle in his drive to see the president elected to four more years in office.

Referring to the campaign, he said: "You're going to be sick and tired of seeing us by the time it's over. You're going to see more TV ads and more of the president than you want to see.

"We are going to win Wisconsin, no ifs, ands or buts," he said.

Sounding like a national sales manager, Rove told a friend to tell a friend to tell a friend to vote Bush-Cheney.

"What's going to win is person-to-person contact," he exhorted. "It is the power of grass roots. It is the power of identifying and getting out the vote."

Since Wisconsin has same-day voter registration, activists need not worry about signing up people for voting privileges 30 days before balloting. He said the worry is the 60 days between now and Nov. 2.

As it happened, the Dems did a better job of identifying and getting out the vote -- because Wisconsin as a whole leans Democratic -- so Team Bush lost that race, narrowly. Obama crushed McCain in 08 and beat Romney decisively in '12.

So ever since then, Republicans have been howling about how they've been undermined by voter fraud and Wisconsin became the front line on the Republican jihad for voter suppression. (Note: if Dems were as good at voter fraud as Republicans shamefully suggest, Scott Walker never would have been elected County Executive.) 

The people who register on election day skew young, they skew Hispanic, they skew black. It's not surprising that Walker wants to do what he can to prevent them from voting. That doesn't make it any less contemptible or anti-democratic. 

Craig Gilbert had a great backgrounder on same-day registration, and the costs of doing away with it, last year.

 

Pat Roggensack, crony capitalist

Given the unpopularity of crony capitalism, it may be worthwhile for someone to point out that Pat Roggensack's rulings get a 100% approval rating (page 2) from the nexus of business interests that have invested millions to buy the Supreme Court of Wisconsin and no doubt will pony up to get Roggensack on the bench.

Not that Roggesnack would think there's anything wrong with that.

Roggensack won 51-49, in a largely self-financed campaign, in 2003. It'll be a lot more expensive this time around.

Can Roggensack be defeated?

The Brawler was very happy to see that Judge Maryann Sumi is contemplating a run against Supreme Court of Wisconsin Justice Patience Roggensack in the spring election.

The Brawler was also very happy to see that Sumi realizes this is going to be a tough and expensive fight. Although that shouldn't be surprising given all the abuse she's received from the right over the past two years.

Can she win? That's a different question -- and you'd have to assume that the incumbent, who can count on boatloads of cash from WMC etc., would have the advantage. But, if JoAnne Kloppenburg, not a particularly strong candidate, came close to taking down David Prosser, a Sumi win would be more than possible.

 

Godspeed you, Right Wisconsin!

Like many freedom-loving leftists, I was appalled by the revelation that Journal Broadcast Group was going to expand the Charlie Sykes empire with the creation of a digital "community" called Right Wisconsin. The fact that a media group was brazenly trying to further Republican interests doesn't exactly square with the fact that they operate on the public airwaves and ostensibly in the public interest.

Never mind that Sykes' partner in crime was going to be Brian Fraley, who once enthused that the Supreme Court of Wisconsin needed to "slap down" Judge Maryann Sumi.

But I've changed my mind! If wingnuts really want to embrace epistemic disclosure and wrap themselves in a fact-free "community," who am I to complain. And if JRN wants to underwrite this exercise in reality unskewing, god bless 'em. Hopefully it will provide more comedy like that we saw Romney's HQ on Election Night.

David Frum has pointed out that the right wing media echo chamber did not exactly serve conservatives well during the latest election. 

Columnist David Frum last week slammed the “conservative entertainment complex” that had “fleeced, exploited and lied to” Republicans, ensuing doom on Election Day.

“These people have made politics a theater for identity politics for a segment of America, rather than a way to solve collective problems,” Frum told POLITICO, referring to conservative media commentators. “What is happening now, and it’s disturbing, is that this complex has sold the idea that conservatives are the real majority in America. That claim has been exposed as false. But they are turning on the country and leading their viewers toward alienation and rejection.”

Not surprisingly aforementioned genius Fraley, whose income depends on misinforming his herd, insists the way to victory is by burrowing deeper into the cocoon:

But one thing is certain: Our RightWisconsin project is more important than we even imagined it would be. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Republicans lost solely because of the pathetic job done by the mainstream media in this country. But it's undeniable that Wisconsinites will benefit from our dynamic new project. They'll be better informed and better equipped to inform others.

 

 

We'll create a new distribution channel for conservative ideas. We'll find and amplify new conservative voices. We'll provide a 24/7 real time forum that will help our folks not only network socially, but rise above the mainstream media filter. RightWisconsin.com will be much more than just a website. We're developing an interactive digital community, a rallying point, a one-stop source for conservatives on the front lines here.

 

In other words, Republicans would have won if their bitter ender base had read three stories about how Obama personally directed the assault on Benghazi instead of one.

So, more power to you Right Wisconsin. Let me know if I can make a contribution.

It's good to see Cardinal Dolan called out for payments to pedophile priests

The New York Times has the story.

Cardinal Dolan, who said poor decisions were made when originally called out, provided money that helped pedophile priest Frankyn Becker get an apartment with a playground view.