How Low Can Wisconsin Republicans Go? | Opinion

Commentary

By Ruth Conniff, The Wisconsin Examiner

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June 29, 2021

The top news out of the Wisconsin Republican convention last weekend was Trump’s attack on our state GOP leaders and their groveling response.

Like Voldemort’s followers in the Harry Potter series, they continue to abase themselves even as the object of their adoration rewards them with torture. It’s creepy to watch.

On the eve of the convention, Trump lashed out at state Republican leaders, claiming that they “are working hard to cover up election corruption in Wisconsin” by blocking a so-called forensic audit of election results. “Don’t fall for their lies!” Trump urged his followers, warning that Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, Senate President Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) will be “run out of office” if they don’t shape up. (Trump still claims to have won Wisconsin, despite all the recounts, lawsuits and official findings showing he lost.)

Vos and Kapenga scurried to soothe Trump’s ruffled feathers, assuring him that they had, in fact, supported an audit of the 2020 presidential results. Vos claimed that Trump had been “misinformed,” and in a gesture of partisan fealty, announced at the convention that he had hired one of the most corrupt former justices in Wisconsin Supreme Court history, Michael Gableman, to lead the investigation into the election results.

Vos, a master of cynicism, speaks fluently out both sides of his mouth on the subject of Trump’s Big Lie — retweeting former Vice President Mike Pence’s speech defending certifying the election results at the same time he pushes his partisan fraud investigation on Wisconsin.

Kapenga is just plain craven. He wrote to Trump that it was an “honor” to be mentioned by “a President that I have publicly supported, and still support,” and added a Freudian touch, simpering that “the power of your pen to mine is like Thor’s hammer to a Bobby pin.”

“Nevertheless, I need to correct your false claim against me,” Kapenga wrote informing Trump that he did, too, call for a forensic audit of the election results! Then he threw in a little extra groveling, telling Trump he was flying on an airplane wearing his Trump socks and a Trump/Pence mask “if the liberals are going to force me to wear a mask, I am going to make it as painful for them as possible,” he wrote. “I will continue to do this regardless of whether or not I ever hear from you.”

Grotesque as it is, the humiliation of our state leaders by Trump would be of little concern to the general public if the Republicans did not also emulate their boss by being bullies themselves.

Gone are the days of dog-whistle racism. This year’s Wisconsin GOP convention was a festival of crazy, hate-filled rants. There was Congressman Tom Tiffany declaring, “Today’s Democrat Party wants to put illegal aliens first and Americans last,” and decrying “government-sponsored racial quotas that discriminate against farmers, restauranteurs and even school children based solely on the color of their skin” — by which he means that white people are victims of programs aimed at lifting up disadvantaged children, small business owners and Black farmers.

Sen. Ron Johnson, Trump’s favorite enabler, went all the way to Milwaukee on Juneteenth to generate some Fox News footage of himself clashing with Black residents. There he was at the Republican convention bragging about getting booed by Black people on the holiday that marks the end of slavery.

There was speech after speech attacking “critical race theory” — i.e. the accurate teaching of U.S. history that includes the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination, and swipe after swipe at the same $4 billion in American Rescue Plan funds intended to help relieve debt for Black farmers after decades of systemic discrimination in lending by the USDA.

When it first made headlines, the Republican-aligned Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty’s lawsuit against the federal government for offering aid to Black farmers sounded absurd. Would WILL have sued to stop the Civil War era’s (unfulfilled) promise to give former slaves 40 acres and a mule?

Whether or not Black farmers receive federal aid is of zero concern to (mostly white) rural Wisconsin compared with the massive infusion of cash the Biden administration has offered (and state Republicans have repeatedly tried to reject) in aid for farms, small businesses, infrastructure, health care, schools and rural broadband.

But by now it has become clear that all the talk about Black farmers and critical race theory is part of a larger GOP plan. The Republicans are marshalling white fear and rage.

Take this gem from the Winnebago County Republican Party Facebook page: A graphic of a young white man’s face is accompanied by the statement:

“Know the warnings of white supremacy

1. Full-time employment
2. Literacy
3. Professional or technical degree
4. Regular church/temple attendance
5. Auto insurance
6. Good credit rating
7. No criminal record”

Confronted with a Democratic president, in Joe Biden, and a Democratic governor, in Tony Evers, who are offering significant help to the very working-class and rural voters Republicans claim to represent, the Republicans are scrambling to refocus on the conversation on race.

That’s because they have nothing to show those same constituents in the way of progress. Rural Wisconsinites have gratefully accepted billions from the federal government in COVID relief. But Wisconsin was the only state in the union in which the entire Republican Congressional delegation voted against the first emergency coronavirus response in September 2020, when Trump was still president, and have kept on voting against further federal aid. Republican legislative leaders turned down $1.6 billion to expand BadgerCare, making us one of only 12 states to reject the Medicaid expansion and denying needed medical coverage to 90,000 Wisconsinites who earn up to 130% of the federal poverty level.

Despite an unexpected $4.4 billion in projected tax revenue flooding state coffers, Republican legislators drafted a brutally austere schools budget that foolishly relies on one-time, federal pandemic assistance to fund ongoing school expenses. That budget didn’t meet federal standards that require states to keep on funding their own schools and, as a result, Wisconsin was at risk of not receiving $2.3 billion in COVID relief from the feds.

The Republicans then pulled an accounting trick to make it look like they increased school funding to qualify for the money, putting $500 million into a property tax cut instead of giving it to schools.

Now, on top of that, they have crafted an income tax cut that will cost the state $2.3 billion anyway. All that money down the drain, as my colleague Erik Gunn reports, just so three out of four Wisconsin households can get back less than $7 a week. It is, as one school finance director told me, “the very definition of fiscal irresponsibility.”

The Republicans are flat-footed. They hope they can distract people from the sheer bankruptcy of their position by getting them all excited about something called critical race theory.

If they yell loudly enough about race, maybe voters won’t notice them squandering the “golden opportunity,” described by the Wisconsin Policy Forum in a recent report, “positioning state reserves to reach historic levels and giving Wisconsin a once-in-a-generation chance to address some of its longstanding challenges.”

Instead, the GOP is handing out checks for $7.

But hey, if they are mortgaging the state’s future and screwing their constituents out of decent schools, roads, jobs and health care, at least the Republicans are standing up to Black farmers. Their slogan for 2022 elections should be “let them eat white identity politics.”

The Wisconsin Examiner, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news site, offers a fresh perspective on state politics and policy through investigative reporting and daily coverage dedicated to the public interest. The Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by grants and a coalition of donors and readers.