GOP Legislators Hand Walker Political/Media Freebie

Gov. Walker says he will veto a budget amendment crafted by ham-handed GOP members of the Joint Finance Committee that would have kicked the non-profit Center for Investigative Journalism out of its UW-Madison campus office space and obstructed its relationships with Journalism school faculty.

Leaving the measure in the budget would have stamped the state, and Walker, by extension, as hostile to news gathering and academic freedom.

Thin-skinned GOP legislators regularly hostile to the Madison campus and the surrounding city from safely-gerrymandered out-state districts could give a rip about academic freedom and unfettered, public-service investigative reporting, but Walker has a national reputation under construction and couldn't get near such petty stupidity.

I doubt that the GOP legislators who voted nearly unanimously in both houses to back up the finance committee and show the journalism center the door intended to hand Walker this favor - - I suspect it was more a gratuitous kick at Madison, with a side helping of displeasure over stories about State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser's 'temperment'  - - but the effect is the same: the veto lets him look reasonable and a good program is saved in his otherwise often-reactionary budget.

Cross-posted at Purple Wisconsin.