Will Wisconsin's Conservative Legislators Put An End To Critical UW Science?

And high-end jobs, and scads of high-tech businesses in and around Madison that go with it?

It sure does look that way.

The ideologues who run the legislature, who carry Scott Walker's water, who get their marching orders and talking points from right-wing talk shows and shrill advocacy groups are now hell-bent on closing Wisconsin's best, home-grown businesses and driving some of the state's most productive research scientists, life-giving disease fighters,  skilled grant-writers, bold venture capital funders, and fearless corporate innovators to Texas, California, South Korea and elsewhere overseas.

All in a twisted application of anti-abortion politics, and in a misdirected campaign against embyronic stem cell science, as a Wisconsin technology spokesman points out.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a paper that endorsed Walker for Governor, also wants the legislature initiative stopped:

Identical bills introduced by Republicans in the state Assembly and Senate would make it a crime for researchers in Wisconsin to use cells derived from fetal tissue. A ban would put an end to research in labs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin and would almost certainly lead to an exodus of both scientists and the companies that are putting their research to work.

Reasonable people from both parties should run from this profoundly bad idea.

We'll see if the Walkerites even care, or care being so advised: their embrace of legislative brute force, whether on the unneeded Voter ID bill, rollbacks to collective bargaining and trashing of rail and regional transit, suggest they are beyond restraint and reason while enjoying dismantling the status quo.

Don't be surprised if the ultra-conservatives in the Legislature are willing to throw a deliberate dart into the Democratic-leaning UW system and the Dane County economy - - usually the brightest spot in otherwise flat or sagging statewide job reporting  - - to put politics and pandering ahead of pragmatism, good jobs, business development, and promising science.

That's what ideologues will do if you hand them the reins of government, and why traditional, pro-business leaders and opinion-makers who have been slow-dancing with this band of  hard-edged conservatives may discover just how firmly they have been jilted by Tea Party Republicans.