Free Republic

Via Mediaite, actual quote: “As president of the United States, I’ve got a lot of responsibilities.” Responsibilities? Wasn’t he golfing on Saturday, May 26, ten days before the election? In fact, wasn’t he right next door to Wisconsin in Minnesota and Illinois the Friday before the polls opened? I do believe he was. Let’s see what important presidential responsibilities he was tending to that day: On Friday, he visited Minneapolis, Minnesota, for a midday speech and three fundraisers. He departed late afternoon for Chicago and three more fundraisers that evening. The president stayed overnight in his hometown and spent Saturday...

Scott Walker beat the spread. Sometime politics is like betting on football. It's not just about whether your team wins. It's about whether you beat the spread. The rough calculation going into Tuesday's recall election in Wisconsin was that if Governor Scott Walker won by less than five percentage points, the race would not have any clear national-level implications, but if he won by five points or more, it would. The final result, 53.2% to 46.3%, is a margin of 6.9 percentage points. He beat the spread... --snip-- But we are finally reaching the Thatcher Line: the point at which...

Gov. Scott Walker's victory in the Wisconsin recall election this week was no surprise to anyone but Big Labor. Unions were furious when Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature cut back their right to bargain on anything beyond wages. Democratic legislators fled the state for several weeks in 2011 in order to try to prevent a final vote from taking place. Demonstrators took over the state capitol, and when that didn't work, unions and left-leaning groups gathered signatures to force a recall vote. The national Democratic Party initially saw what was happening in Wisconsin as a popular revolt against Republican excesses...

"Win" is too small a word for what Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker pulled off Tuesday. So, probably, is victory. In a referendum on the first half of his first term, the Republican became the first governor in U.S. history to defeat an attempt to oust him from office. The other two recall efforts -- against California's Gray Davis in 2003 and North Dakota's Lynn Frazier in 1921 --were successful. Exit polls discovered a significant number of Wisconsin voters bothered by the union-led recall bid for something short of improper conduct. While others were impressed by Walker's budget surplus and billion...

Wow. Where to start? The "it's gonna be a late night in Madison" notion was virtually over by the end of Happy Hour -- which no doubt did cause some very late nights instead in Washington and Chicago. With little or no happiness at all. And naturally there were also the comparisons to the vibes of the night Scott Brown took down the Kennedy seat in 2009. More on both of these dynamics shortly. The real story is: what happened this spring in Wisconsin was not a recall election at all. Pure and simple, it was a mulligan. A childish...

Democrats appeared to have assumed control of the state Senate with results posted early Wednesday showing former Sen. John Lehman (D-Racine) in a tight race defeating incumbent Van Wanggard, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting...

The Tea Party Express has their two busses in the front of the parking lot at the Expo center.

Updated 9:56 p.m. — WAUKESHA, Wis. — Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker survived a furious recall campaign on Tuesday, emerging as the victor in a bitter fight over state budgets and collective bargaining rights. NBC News declared Walker the projected winner over Democratic challenger Tom Barrett in a closely-watched campaign first prompted after Walker drove a bill stripping public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights through Wisconsin's legislature showed little signs of abating, according to exit polls. The stark divisions that took hold after Walker drove a bill stripping public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights through Wisconsin's legislature...

MSNBC CALLS WALKER WIN: RECALL LOSES [ 22% Reporting Walker 61%, Barrett=38%]

<p>New thread so we can keep this at the top of the breaking news sidebar.</p>

Didn't see an actual thread we could use for a central point for election information today. Lets do this Wisconsin!!!

Our final poll in the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election comes after an impressive debate performance by Democrat Tom Barrett — who may have saved his best for last. The highlight for many viewers was when Barrett took beleaguered Republican Gov. Scott Walker to the woodshed for airing a very tough ad that displays an image of a severely beaten child who later died of his injuries, suggesting that as Milwaukee mayor, Barrett’s police department “didn’t consider it a crime.” In reality, the person who beat the child was arrested but escaped prosecution through a bureaucratic blunder not of Barrett’s doing....

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) extolled the Democratic ground game in Wisconsin in an appearance on MSNBC Monday, and said it would launch Democratic nominee Tom Barrett to a win against Gov. Scott Walker, defying conventional wisdom that Walker is a lock to stay in office. “I do think that people have underestimated our ground game, and I think we’ve developed the critical mass of factors to lead us on to victory on Tuesday,” said Moore. “No. 1, Tom is surging with independents, such an important constituency for winning an election. Secondly, we have a number of switchers, of — you...

Wisconsin election officials issued over 206,000 absentee ballots ahead of Tuesday's statewide recall election, the Government Accountability Board reported Monday. The absentee figure is often used to gauge the percentage of voters likely to come to the polls on election day. In a race where both sides insist turnout is key, the GAB predicts between 60 and 65 percent voter turnout, a record for a gubernatorial election. In the 2010 general election for governor, voters filed 230,744 absentee ballots total.

Those surprising results would project at a 56-44 final win for Walker. HOWEVER, while Walker continues to lead Barrett, we once again caution readers that this is an extremely difficult election to predict. Turnout is king in all elections, and it may be even more important in this one.

Unbelievable. The Democrats are looking down the barrel of a humiliating defeat in Wisconsin’s recall election on Tuesday, so today they played their last card: they started a rumor that Scott Walker fathered an illegitimate child 24 years ago. The “scoop” comes from something called the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op. The “Co-op” attributes the story to a woman named Bernadette Gillick, who teaches physical therapy at the University of Minnesota. Ms. Gillick claims to have known Walker’s girlfriend when they were students at Marquette. The “Co-op” says it has “not been able to independently verify Bernadette’s account.” No surprise there.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker leads Democrat Tom Barrett 52% to 45% in a poll to be released Wednesday by Marquette Law School. Walker’s lead is almost identical in the new poll to what it was in Marquette’s early May survey, when Walker led 50% to 44% among likely voters.

Balance the GOP presidential ticket? Nah! That's Democrat stuff. Mitt Romney has the chance to a make a powerful statement with his V.P. choice. Governor Scott Walker -- a boring white guy's white guy -- is about to make a very powerful statement in Wisconsin. A thumbs-up by Wisconsin voters for Walker in next Tuesday's recall election would be a huge victory for bold governmental reform. A Walker victory establishes that Republicans can enact significant reforms and survive onslaughts by public-sector labor unions, the left, and the dependent classes. For conservative reformers, a Walker recall win is the modern equivalent...

By Anita Kumar Two weeks before the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall, Virginia’s Republican leaders are coming to the aid of Gov. Scott Walker. Gov. Bob McDonnell, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, will appear with Walker at an event Tuesday, according to his office, though details have not been released. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli asked supporters to donate to Walker’s campaign in what he called the “second most important election in America in 2012.’’ “June 5th will be a clash of political forces of titanic proportions that will affect how (and whether) others in politics will meaningfully take on our biggest...

Recent polls have pointed toward a victory for Republican Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin’s June 5 recall election. But here’s the clearest evidence to date that national Democratic party officials believe their side is losing: Democratic officials are playing down the potential impact. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) insisted in a television interview that a loss for the Democratic candidate in the recall, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, wouldn't have any implications for other races, such as the presidential election. “I think, honestly, there aren’t going to be any repercussions,” Wasserman Schultz said on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program....