Milwaukee Right Spot For Righty WI GOP Convention? Maybe Not

Friday 6:50 p.m. update: Wisconsin's Republican Assembly members rediscovering the party's Lincolnesque roots. Still no word if Paul Ryan still thinks inner-city African-American males are thinking about working. More later.

Don't get me wrong: I'm glad the Republican Party of Wisconsin chose Milwaukee as the site of its 2014 convention that begins Friday, but can you blame me for wondering if our urban downtown is really the party's best choice?

After all, it wasn't that long ago that recall election candidate Scott Walker urged his supporters in Waukesha County's Oconomowoc Lake - - about as unlike Milwaukee demographically as you could get - - to back him against opponent Tom Barrett, Milwaukee's Mayor, lest Wisconsin become "another Milwaukee."

At the time, Walker couldn't wait to get out of the County Executive's suite in the downtown Milwaukee Courthouse, what with all the pesky supervisors and unions and crumbling County parking ramps and nightmarish mental health facilities and troublesome Internet routers giving a gubernatorial candidate a headache.

You can see how one Milwaukee was enough for that guy.

Then there's the matter of that secessionist resolution on the convention agenda.

A Journal Sentinel 2011 feature story disclosed that the second of 12,000 Wisconsin soldiers to die in the US Civil War was a young Milwaukee man.

Despite Wisconsin's modest population, only four other states sent more soldiers to battle. [That sentence reflects the correction of an error on my part. An earlier version said Wisconsin's soldier death toll had been fifth highest among the states.]

There's a display of Civil War memorabilia over at the Milwaukee Public Museum just up the street from where state GOP delegates are meeting at the Convention Center.

Does the Wisconsin GOP really want to talk secession in the shadow of Milwaukee's tribute to Wisconsin's Civil War dead?

There's another problem facing the delegates and the boss - - our state's stagnant, 35th-out-of 50 growth rating among the states.

Along with Walker's equally insufficient 42% progress towards his failing 250,000 new-jobs-after-one-term pledge - - a political burden going into another election, in part because Walker turned aside years of federally-funded employment to build an upgraded Milwaukee to Madison Amtrak rail line, bridges and stations.

In your face, President Obama!

Though it meant forgoing the construction work and also forcing the closing of a Milwaukee train assembly, repair and maintenance facility that had just been opened by a Spanish firm in a low-income, heavily-minority neighborhood near W. Capitol Dr. and 30th Street.

Convention attendees might actually be able to break for a field trip to the shuttered assembly plant as it dispatches to Michigan two brand-new made-in-Milwaukee/banned-in-Milwaukee/mothballed-in-Milwaukee trains.

All the details about the loss of the train work, Walker's jobs-creating failing and more, are linked or referenced in one posting, here.

Walker's handlers and speech-writers will have to cherry-pick all the disappointing job-creation data, so maybe the convention would have been better held in Door County, where cherry picking is a virtue.

Or the convention could have been better scheduled  in Madison, where the delegates could have decamped, en masse, to the Capitol Theater for the May 6th performance by "Fitz and The Tantrums."

How do you not jump on that?