Priebus reveals more of that 'Midwestern nice'

Here's the prism through which I see the threat just made against the congressional ethics watchdog by Reince Priebus, who along with fellow right-wing Wisconsin politicians Scott Walker and Paul ('lazy black men') Ryan, seem at ease with presenting a less-than-menacing, 'midwestern nice' face to the world while routinely abusing less-powerful people by misusing official authority.

Donald Trump's incoming White House chief of staff warned the director of the Office of Government Ethics on Sunday to "be careful" about criticizing Trump's handling of his business conflicts.

*  What better example from our state of power arrogated was there than right-wing Governor Scott Walker, after having "dropped the [union-busting] bomb" on public employees and 50 years of collective bargaining later claiming for himself during his 15-second run for the President that uninformed and inaccurate media trope 'midwestern nice' to paper over his rigid, rightist and repellent record?

In a recent interview with conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Walker addressed those concerns. “Yeah, I’m nice. I’m midwestern nice. There’s no doubt about it,” he said. 

Right: 'Midwestern nice' neatly disguises Walker having frozen the minimum wage at $7.25-per-hour. slashing K-12 and UW system financing, dog-whistling drug testing of poor people, defunding women's health clinics, green-lighting wetlands filling, enabling well-water contamination near deregulated animal feedlots, retaining through a private bill singing the retention of offensive Native American school names and mascots, and rejecting federal funding for passenger rail expansion, rural broadband improvements and Medicaid services for low-income citizens.

Much of which was catalogued here.

*  So Priebus is that midwestern nice mistake 2.0, who, yes, looks less menacing that the Manhattan marauder who's hired him and hasn't even officially occupied the Chief of Staff position before behaving with the very arrogance that is the signature style of the original midwestern nice mistake Scott Walker.

* Not to mention the bullying of another right-wing Badgerland bust, Wisconsin GOP State Senator Scott Fitzgerald and his 'arrest those absent Senators!' legacy.

* And do not forget Wisconsin right-wing GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who openly threatened the independent state ethics chief Kevin Kennedy before Fitzgerald, Walker and Vos wiped out Kennedy's job and non-partisan agency.

Said Vos, signaling what the GOP leadership in our nice Midwestern state eventually did:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, says the head of Wisconsin’s elections agency “has to go.”

But Gov. Scott Walker says the issue isn’t on his radar.

Vos harshly criticized Kevin Kennedy, director and general counsel of the state Government Accountability Board, both on Tuesday at a luncheon in Madison and again Wednesday during an interview with the State Journal.

Keep an eye on that second sentence with Walker's feigned disinterest, because not long thereafter, Vos, Fitzgerald and Walker got the deed done, with Walker apparently having gotten over over his disinterest (wink-wink):

Scott Walker signs bills dismantling GAB, overhauling campaign finance law

*  Now it's Priebus' turn to behave in the same, ultra-partisan, ethics-free, ends-justify-the-means-fashion, which, if media are going its job, should give the definitive lie to the idea that Wisconsin GOP pols on the national scene are just a bunch of 'Mr. Smith Goes To Washington-aw-shucks' fellas.

*  Final thought: would it surprise you to learn that Vos and Priebus were college roommates?

Two of Wisconsin's top Republicans -- Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Wisconsin Rep. Robin Vos have a friendship that dates back to their days as college roommates!

In the late 1980s and early 1990s in an apartment near campus, two ambitious young UW-Whitewater students became roommates, forging a friendship that forever changed Wisconsin politics.