Let’s go ahead and see the forest. We all see the trees – the war on voting, the war on workers, the war on women, the war on poor people, the war on government, and, most of all, the war on truth and reality. If you step back and take a look, the obvious pattern – or forest - they reveal is one of a war on Democracy.
The republicans have known for some time that their agenda won’t survive the Democratic process. They knew over 30 years ago that the more people vote, the worse they do.
There’s no public demand for voter ID laws, or reducing voting hours and days, or open or concealed carry, or restrictions on abortions, or lower taxes on corporations and wealthy people, or the gutting of safety and environmental regulations, or the privatization of Government functions, or the restriction of union activity, or for cuts in social spending. These activities are not representative of the will of the people, but are the imposition of an agenda by ideologues without regard for the will of the people.
The republicans have repeatedly shown a willingness to actively subvert the will of the people here in Wisconsin, for instance, restricting the will of locals if that will runs counter to their ideology, like restricting localities’ ability to mandate worker benefits and bargain with unions, or to regulate mining or tenant/landlord relations. (This certainly isn't the only state where they've subverted Democracy - Michigan comes to mind as a rather egregious example)
And now we’re finding out the extent to which the republicans in Wisconsin were willing to go in their effort to survive the popular backlash against their radical agenda: they worked to subvert the laws of our state to illegally defeat the Democratic will of the people. They’ve continued to try to subvert the law by seeking to have sympathetic judges halt the investigations into their illegal activities. And, it comes as no surprise to see the slimy fingerprints of one of the Nation’s foremost corrupters of Democracy, the criminal Carl Rove, and to find that he is involved in this conspiracy.
Of course, they’ve had the contributions of wealthy in and out of state supporters – whose interests conflict with those of most of the state’s citizens – all along, and as a result we were bombarded with endless, disgusting, false and misleading ads to prop up these horrible and corrupt people and maintain the cavalcade of lies that allowed them to stay out of prison and in power.
I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end of the reign of walker and the kochs and their ilk in Wisconsin, as well as the end of their program of regression, hypocracy and corruption. I still believe they’re an anomaly in an otherwise fairly level headed state, and I have always felt they would eventually wear out their welcome. This would be a perfect year, and indictments would be a perfect way, for that to go down. Here’s hoping.