Tuesday, November 27, 2018

WI's little dictators may tilt '20 WI high court election to embed Walkerism

So Walker-the-incumbent-Governor just lost an election and the geniuses in the loser's inner circle want to saddle a sitting State Supreme Court Justice with an even heavier Walker identity than merely having been hand-picked in 2016 by Walker to serve after Justice David Prosser had quit?

This is like watching The Three Stooges build an airplane and try to fly it from New York to LA.

Not content with having gerrymandered the State Legislature to give themselves lopsided advantages, the little dictators serving as Republican leaders in their already rigged Assembly and Senate chambers are working on something even more brazen - - and potentially suicidally-stupid - - on the eve of Walker's boot by voters from the State Capitol.

Their scheme: a gerrymander-like rigging - - not by packing partisan voters and addresses into easy-to-win districts, but by packing the State Supreme Court and guaranteeing easy-to-win special interest cases.

How? By manipulating the routine election calendar to give a perceived leg up to Daniel Kelly, a State Supreme Court Justice appointed earlier by Walker to fill a vacancy, and thus a potentially weak candidate without an election win and proven base of support among voters.

What the GOP legislative leaders are considering is separating the presidential primary contest and the State Supreme Court election from the same 2020 spring ballot those races would normally share, and where a big Blue Democratic turnout in April 2020 drawn to a large field vying to take on Trump that fall would likely also vote for a presumably more-progressive alternative to Justice Kelly.

This manipulation of the Wisconsin election calendar by Republicans through a special legislative session allegedly called to consider a subsidy for Kimberly-Clark which Republicans are fumbling away will backfire, I guarantee it.

People will see right through the hypocrisies, having heard Walker say eleventeen-billion times with robotic sanctimony that the GOP in Wisconsin was all about making it easier to vote and harder to cheat. Except when the cheaters are in power and calling the shots, whether by drafting deliberately-distorted legislative district maps in secret, or scheming out in the open to monkey with a scheduled State Supreme Court ballot.

And we put "Justice" in those very important job titles? Please.

Justice Kelly, already having been appointed by Walker, will be perceived by voters as a post-Walker-defeat-Walker-surrogate and a GOP plant helped along by a blatant abuse of state power and waste of public monies.

And Republicans want you to believe they are the law-and-order and fiscally-conservative party? Please.

Kelly might as well change his name to Scott Walker, because a surge of people drawn to the polls will fill in another anti-Walker ballot.

Just like they did three weeks ago. 

And just like all those voters did nationwide when they went to the polls, 'saw' Trump on the ballot and threw out dozens of Republicans who would have carried Trump's water had they won.

I'm telling you right now, go ahead, ye little dim-bulb dictators also known as Fitzgerald and Vos: go ahead and grasp, at your instant disgrace and enduring peril, for the reins of power which are already being pulled from your hands.

You know, I'd intended to retire the photograph below of Walker once he left the Governor's mansion for appearances, perhaps with fellow has-been David Clarke, on the big-check-and-rubber-chicken circuit, but I'll hold on to it for the 2020 State Supreme Court race should Walker's hand-picked candidate - - apparently unsatisfied with already having received one Walker favor to get appointed to the State Supreme Court - - try and remain there for a full ten-year term through a power grab enabled by Walker's trusty lieutenants and one last hand-drawn "SKW."




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