Thursday, November 6, 2014

Salon.com lays out Walker's many negatives

Joan Walsh shows other national media where to look:
Walker’s appeal to national Republicans seems to be he’s a sleepy-eyed radical with a folksy non-charisma, so he won’t scare normal people the way Cruz does. But Walker is no moderate: RNC chairman Reince Priebus disclosed at CPAC this year that the then-Milwaukee county executive was among 15 Koch-allied radicals present at the creation of what became Wisconsin’s Tea Party movement way back in 2007, developing a template to bust unions and cut taxes. Grover Norquist boasted that Walker gave him the pen he used to sign his budget repair bill in 2011.
Beyond Walker’s political radicalism, there is so much for the national media to comb over in his puzzling biography. From his mysterious departure from Marquette University sans diploma, to his opaque “job” at the Milwaukee Red Cross (where he somehow found the time to run for state assembly twice in three years), to that treasure-trove of documents released in two John Doe probes into campaign law violations, to the six close associates convicted in one of those probes, Walker tops Chris Christie in unanswered ethical and biographical questions.
I was especially glad to see Walsh reprise Salon.com's scoop about the 2007 meeting. I'd been pressing - - unsuccessfully - - for local media to take a deeper look before the election Tuesday. 

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Regarding the fact that local media didn't pursue the 2007 story, most of the blame can be assigned to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - the watchdog that didn't bark.

boxer said...

Lazich's elevation to Senate president and Grothman's to Congress--Congress!!!--is Revenge of the Nerds Meets the Peter Principle.

Anonymous said...

Yes, that 2007 story about coordination has stuck with me, too...so I looked it up today: Gableman, a justice from nowhere Wisconsin, with little experience, in 2008 trumps a S Court incumbent, a defeat for the 1st time in decades (one that occurred the very next year after the coordination meeting).

Club 4Growth WI (Eric O'K...) made one of the 1st donations and 2nd largest donation (tied) to that campaign early on in Dec 2007 [could not find when Gableman announced his candidacy to see if that donation was *coincidence*].

Coordination...

(Oh, and does the slime factor strategy from Gableman's campaign sound familiar to the most recent election?)

Anonymous said...

Sorry--my last comment on this. According to the WDC database, the contribution to Gableman's campaign by Club 4GrowthWI was the only one it has ever made. It neither contributed to a campaign before nor after Gableman.

Huh?

Yeah, 2007 was a turning point, and something significant happened after that.