The GOP Is Learning No Lessons From Losing Big In Wisconsin
Wisconsin proves anti-abortion and anti-democracy policies are not winners.
The liberal judge in Wisconsin, Janet Protasiewicz, just crushed her Republican opponent, election fraudster Dan Kelly, in the recent WI Supreme Court election by 10 points, an unexpectedly large win that suggests Wisconsin might be joining Michigan back behind the famed “Blue Wall” of reliable Democratic electoral votes in presidential elections (Pennsylvania is the 3rd Blue Wall state).
This is extremely worrisome for Republicans because Wisconsin’s blend of demographics and 10 votes in the Electoral College currently make it the tipping point state in our elections. January 6th organizer and insurrectionist Ali Alexander said it best when his response to the election was “I do not see a path to 270 in 2024,” though, for him and Dan “I-Don’t-Have-a-Worthy-Opponent” Kelly, it’s less a worry that the 2024 GOP presidential candidate won’t win the popular vote, and more a regret that now the WI Supreme Court won’t be able to override the popular vote and give the state’s electoral votes to the Republican no matter the results.
This is just one more case of Republicans’ attack on democracy and proliferating illiberalism biting them in the ass. Dan Kelly joins a host of insurrection-supporting candidates with a passion for election fraud in the last two and a half years to lose very competitive and winnable elections by larger margins than their more moderate Republican colleagues.
It’s also another indicator that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and Republicans’ onslaught of attacks on abortion rights have been as terrible politics as Democrats warned all along. I, and most liberal commentators, have written for years that Republican politicians benefitted the most from the status quo that Roe V. Wade provided because they got to gin up grassroots support and votes from their Christian base for their pro-life bona fides without having to actually do anything about it besides say “Roe V. Wade ties my hands.” Polls have consistently demonstrated for decades that abortion is a 60+/40- issue, and now Republicans are the dog that caught the car, just like everyone who isn’t a fundamentalist zealot said they would be.
This WI election is some dark foreshadowing for 2024. Republicans were convinced the 2022 midterms would result in an epic red wave, but their attacks on democracy and abortion helped make it a blue-stained puddle that failed to win back the Senate and ultimately won the GOP a historically small majority that is already threatening to end Kevin McCarthy’s speakership as Republicans are floundering in disarray to create a budget proposal to counter President Biden’s budget.
The budgetary partisan-infighting is related here because, just like Republicans have turned too radical to keep the WI Supreme Court majority or honor sensible and medically appropriate compromises on abortion rights, they’re too radical to put together a budget. The GOP’s moderates and Congressional leaders don’t want to force a default on America’s debt, but they know that actually putting together a Republican budget proposal to counter Biden’s budget is political poison and a public relations nightmare that would necessarily put on paper House Republicans’ most draconian and extremist ideas to cut whole governmental agencies and departments, shred the social safety net and Social Security/Medicare in particular, and raise taxes on poor people. GOP budget proposals have become Democratic wishlist campaign ads.
It’s an impossible position for Kevin McCarthy to be in because politically he has to oppose Biden’s budget no matter what’s in it, but he fundamentally can’t create any GOP budget palatable for independent voters, let alone good-faith compromising with a Democrat President and Senate.
But, just like on abortion, everyone who is not a moron could plainly see this catch-22 since McCarthy threw his hat in the ring for speaker gave away all his Speaker powers and dignity while losing vote after vote on the House floor. The House Freedom Caucus wants the government to default on its debt because they’re either self-destructive idiots who choose to ignore what an economic calamity it would be, or sociopathic anarchists who think they’d politically benefit from the chaos it would cause.
It doesn’t help that Kevin McCarthy is really dumb, and would be incapable of wrangling the GOP’s House majority even if it wasn’t an unstable circus increasingly dominated by insurrectionist, political terrorists led by Marjorie Taylor Greene’s brand of theocratic, ethno-nationalism endorsing democratic subterfuge as somehow patriotic.
But, of course, Republicans are learning no lessons from this massive 10-point loss in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. Donald Trump claims Dan Kelly, a ringleader of the attempt to send an illegal and fake slate of electors to Mike Pence on January 6th, was not MAGA enough, and Republicans nationwide are not slowing down on their anti-abortion and anti-democracy efforts.
Only a select few Republicans, including washed up has-been Scott Walker, are publicly warning their colleagues about this bad omen, particularly about the astonishingly liberal youth vote of Millennials and GenZ turning against Republicans by unsustainable margins. Walker recently warned on Twitter, “look how Dane Co — home of @UWMadison — had more votes cast than the larger Milwaukee Co.” Dane County ultimately voted an astonishing 82% for Protasiewicz. But Walker is a moron and blames the election results not on the GOP’s ever increasing unelectability, but rather on liberal brainwashing of young people in schools and colleges.
So keep learning no new lessons, Republicans, and let your anti-abortion and anti-democracy policies make a blue wave election in 2024!
Thanks for your eyeballs!
—Dash MacIntyre
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