Out of State Money King Scott Walker Complains About Out of State Money in Wisconsin Recall

The petitioning period for recalling Wisconsin's Governor Scott Walker is winding down. Petitioners have until January 17 to collect over 540,000 signatures and, by all accounts, they'll make it with a few hundred thousand to spare. This is on.

As is so often the case when dealing with a Republican and elections, hypocrisy becomes a problem. They've got a pack full of victim cards and will pounce on any excuse to play one. If it weren't for be constantly offended, outraged, and aggrieved, they wouldn't have anything to talk about. And so it is that Scott Walker has taken to playing a victim card he has no right to hold.

Huffington Post:

As Wisconsin Democrats continued their push to force his recall, Gov. Scott Walker (R) came to Washington on Thursday to raise funds for the election that is all but certain to occur. But while Walker has slammed the influence of out-of-state money in the recall effort, he defended his own fundraising from non-Wisconsinites as fundamentally different from what he called the "excessive amounts" raised by unions and liberal groups.

"The people from around the country who are helping us at the grassroots level are trying to match the amazing levels of money coming in from unions from Washington and throughout the country," said Walker at a question-and-answer event at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday morning. Walker spoke at AEI before meeting with Republican donors at the Capitol Hill Club later in the day.

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Republicans vs. Reality

A lot is being made of a Wall Street Journal editorial out today that points out the obvious: House Republicans have completely screwed up the payroll tax cut extension. While it's nice to see the WSJ momentarily dip their toes in reality, they can't seem to bring themselves to go for full immersion. The editorial is crawling with half-truths and unfounded assumptions. In other words, it was obviously written by the Wall Street Journal editorial board. Still, when a rightwing propaganda outlet attacks the right wing, it's at least interesting to watch.

But has it set the GOP back on the right course? Not exactly. And by "not exactly," I mean "exactly not."

In a report on the whole fiasco, The Hill shares this tidbit:

House Republicans... think it is Democrats who will be blamed for not working with the GOP on a deal to extend the break for a year. In their talking points Tuesday, they emphasized that a conference committee was the normal process for resolving differences between the two chambers.

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Pro-Labor Occupiers About to Win Big

It's not difficult to show the evolution of the "town hall mobs" of rightwingers angry healthcare reform to the Tea Party. It was basically the same people who listen to the same radio shows and fell for largely the same BS. But where the town hall rowdies were focused on one issue, the Tea Party came about when complaints broadened to other issues. "Healthcare reform sucks!" became "healthcare reform sucks -- and I like guns and Obama's a Kenyan Muslim and when government spends money on anyone other than me, that's just like Nazi Germany!"

Sure, both the town hall mobs and the Tea Party were astroturf creations, but look at why people joined. What happened was that people with other concerns were drawn to the coverage the town-hallers were getting and wanted in on the action. The movement grew and the focus broadened.

There's a clumsy parallel on the left with the Occupy movement. It may just be that I'm from ground zero, but I see an evolution from the Wisconsin union protests and the ongoing recall effort to Occupy Wall Street. People saw the occupation of the State Capitol, thought about their own issues, and wondered if that would work for them as well. The left was electrified by the Wisconsin activists and the "hit the streets and take over" method of protest spread out to other states.

One of those states would be Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich and state Republicans jammed through a union-busting bill similar to Wisconsin's. But Ohio is not Wisconsin -- the laws are quite different -- and state Democrats were able to put the question up to the voters. Where Wisconsin only has recall as an option, Ohioans are able to put repeal on a referendum. And that referendum is not going Kasich's way.

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Real Populism vs. Corporate PR

There is one not so obvious or immediately noticeable difference between the Occupy Wall Street protests and your average Tea Party protest. Sure, the crowds seem to be younger, signs featuring Obama as Hitler are entirely absent, and there aren't many people who are dressed like Uncle Sam sneezed stars and stripes all over them. There are no guns or demands to see the president's birth certificate. But the less obvious difference is in buses. While the Tea Party protests always feature big buses covered with flags and eagles, buses at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations are used to haul the protesters to jail.

I bring this up because teapartiers like to pretend they're running their own show. That their protests are grassroots and their organizations are of their own construction. But those buses carting them around from protest to protest didn't just appear out of nowhere. Someone paid for them, someone gave them their ultra-patriotic paint jobs, someone's buying all the gas. All that takes funding and, as much as the 'baggers like to pretend they're an independent movement, they're all bought and paid for -- and then moved from square to square like pawns on a chessboard.

On the other hand, Greg Sargent has this to say about the Wall Street protests:

...If there's one thing that's growing clearer by the hour, it's that this is an entirely organic effort, one that's about nobody but the protestors themselves. In this sense, we're seeing a replay of the Wisconsin protests. Those ended up falling just short of what activists had hoped to achieve, but their months-long showing was still important -- it demonstrated that left wing populism is still alive and well and sent an important message about the mood of the country. The key was that it grew organically with little to no involvement from Beltway Dems and the White House.

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Can Democrats Blow the Upcoming Payroll Tax Fight?

It's hard to see how Democrats could lose this one -- at least, in a PR sense. As Democrats prepare a push to extend a payroll tax break, Republicans oppose it. All of a sudden, tax breaks add to the deficit. They didn't used to, but they do now. Republicans are consistent only in their disregard for logical consistency. When the tax cuts benefit the very rich, they don't add to the deficit. When they don't... Well, that's a different story. And, of course, there's the fact that President Obama is for extending these particular cuts, which -- by the reactionary reasoning of the party -- means they must be bad.

New York Times:

It is hard to find a tax cut that Congressional Republicans dislike. Unless it is a tax cut pushed by President Obama.

In a turning of the tax policy tables, Democrats are increasingly hammering on Republicans who oppose the president’s proposal to extend for a year a payroll tax cut passed last year with bipartisan support.

That tax cut -- which reduces workers' contributions to Social Security this year to 4.2 percent of wages, from 6.2 percent -- expires in December. The White House would like to extend it for another year. But Republicans in Congress are balking, arguing that such a cut adds needlessly to the nation’s budget deficit, and should be replaced with an overhaul of tax policy instead.

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Is Prosser's Magic Lead the Result of Fraud or Just Incompetence?

Let's just say that there's cause for some skepticism here. On Tuesday, an extremely close state Supreme Court race between JoAnne Kloppenburg and incumbent David Prosser stretched into the night -- and then into the next day. By Wednesday, it was reported that JoAnne Kloppenburg had -- unofficially -- scored the slimmest of victories. With 100% of precincts reporting, 204 votes separated the two candidates, according to the count by the Associated Press. A narrow win, to be sure, but more votes are more votes -- the lead you officially need is one. Kloppenburg declared victory and the canvass of the votes began.

Then a funny thing happened. A whole bunch of Prosser votes suddenly appeared...

Wisconsin State Journal:

Incumbent Justice David Prosser gained a 7,500-vote lead in the hotly contested state Supreme Court race Thursday after the clerk in conservative-leaning Waukesha County announced she undercounted the votes because of an inputting error.

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The GOP Agenda: Drive Down Job Growth, Depress Wages

Some time yesterday, I decided that I would write about the GOP's anti-jobs agenda today. So I'm swinging through my feeds last night and I come across this -- MSNBC's Rachel Maddow stole my thunder.

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Let Robert Frank's final words from that interview be what you take away here; that the GOP's focus on the deficit to the detriment of employment is a "criminal misdiagnosis of the problem." I'd add that's a deliberate misdiagnosis.

I'm going to disagree with Maddow on one point; yes, the Republicans' efforts to kill jobs will hurt President Obama in the elections -- but no, that's not the only reason they're trying to strangle off job growth everywhere it rears its head. This is, to a much larger degree, about cheap labor.

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