Monday, December 10, 2018

WI GOP leader's 'I know you are, but what am I' op-ed

The Grand Old Party in getting grander here, as Robin Vos channels the famous Pee Wee Herman one-liner "I know you are, but what am I?"

Where can you see this awesome post-election Republican transformation from the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Pee Wee?


In a Wisconsin State Journal op-ed with an Onionesque headline which collectors of hard-copy newspapers will want to mount in their scrapbooks:

Speaker Robin Vos: Sensationalized rhetoric serves no one
Seriously, this would be like seeing the worship bulletin touting the upcoming sermon, "On monogamy: the Trump view,"  or your monthly business breakfast newsletter offering a GOP speaker on "Trade wars and special counsel fights are easy to win."

At first I thought the op-ed was incorrectly attributed, since the Robin Vos in Wisconsin politics is the one who had just been quoted rather hyperbolically by the AP after his party had lost all the statewide races on Nov. 6th with these words:
“We are not going to roll over and play dead like they assume we probably should.”  
He says Republicans must protect their legacy and “stand like bedrock to guarantee that Wisconsin does not go back.”
By the way, rolling over and playing dead while standing on bedrock is about as bad for your health as keeping your nose to the grindstone while putting your shoulder to the wheel.

Then I remembered Vos not too long ago had called fellow GOP legislators "terrorists" for having sided on budget issues with Gov. Walker. 

And had aimed vitriol Walker's way in some ill-tempered September, 2017 mean texting in September, 2017, too: 

"I won’t forget this,” the Rochester Republican texted the GOP governor after he announced his veto plans...“I'm passing the budget this week and leaving, not to return until October.”
And Vos had even more recently gone after "ultra liberal" judges in Dane County - -and specifically Walker appointee, to boot - - whom Vos labeled "an activist" for ruling that was Walker was required to call special elections to fill legislative vacancies. 

Vacancies which Walker had created, to boot.

One of the judge's senior colleagues did not appreciate Speaker's rhetoric, for which Vos did not apologize:

That was met with a stinging rebuke by Circuit Judge William Hanrahan, who called Vos’s statements “inflammatory, uncalled for," and patently offensive...” 
The record also shows that Vos' sensationalized rhetoric has extended to attacks on a non-partisan, long-serving civil servant atop a non-partisan state agency which Vos has has helped weaken and politicize:

“Kevin Kennedy has to go. He needs to be gone,” Vos said at a Wispolitics.com luncheon Tuesday. “He is an embarrassment, and I can’t say it any more emphatically than I am right now. 
You see, sensationalized rhetoric does serve someone.
Wisconsin’s longest-serving chief election official, who presided over the rise and fall of the state’s nonpartisan government oversight agency, has announced his retirement. 
Kevin Kennedy, 64, will retire on June 29, according to a letter he gave to the Government Accountability Board on Sunday...
Anyway, I read the entire State Journal op-ed.

It's basically a C.Y.A./cut-and-paste chain of GOP talking points Republicans have had on autoplay since their 141-page secret plan to recast state government into a permanent arm of Republican legislators and donors was hurriedly released and rushed to Walker's desk. 

Though it's also possible monkeys at typewriters randomly pounded out sentences like these, and note, please, that t
he italicizations are my added efforts to free some unintentional parody in the op-ed text from possible mis-interpretation:
Many bills in last week’s extraordinary session should not come as a surprise... 
The package of bills is a continuation of the work we have done over the last eight years that has made Wisconsin the gem of the Midwest... 
My office door will be open to Gov.-elect Evers for him to propose any bipartisan idea where we can work together. 
P.S. About that 'gem of the Midwest boast, please this report:
Latest data show Minnesota economy crushing it vs. Wisconsin
P.P.S.  I see no mention in Vos' list no-surprises' list of the information in today's New York Times about Walgreen's well-greased thumb on the scales.

And about the dark-store referenda mentioned in the Times piece which passed across the state in advisory voting in the same Nov. 6th election which Vos and his allies are studiously nullifying.

Another drafting error, I presume.

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1 comment:

Jake formerly of the LP said...

Vos is living proof of the Bill Maher statement about how Republicans don't mentally advance past age 14. The guy is just snotty and whiny all the time. And he thinks people will vote for his negative charisma self statewide?

If I didn't believe in bullying, I'd say someone needs to give Cheesehead Napoleon a HS flashback by giving him a swirlie in the Capitol men's room.