Posted on 01/08/2007 5:50:20 PM PST by SJackson
Year's end is a time to reflect back on the good times and the bad, the winners and losers.
As a political progressive, in an election year I usually don't have much difficulty identifying the losers. In recent years, they've usually been the candidates for whom I voted.
This is odd since I vote for candidates who favor peace over war, love over hate and doing the greatest good for the greatest number instead of stiff-arming most of us and showering our nation's riches upon a privileged few.
Well, 2006 was the year chickens as far as the eye could see swarmed home to roost. Apparently, it's true. You can't fool all the people all the time.
On the national level, progressive Wisconsin politicians such as U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold and Milwaukee Congresswoman Gwen Moore suddenly find themselves in the majority of both houses of Congress with Democrats controlling the agenda.
They'll get a chance to investigate how hundreds of billions of dollars could be misspent at home and abroad on private, no-bid contracts without bothering to rebuild either Iraq or New Orleans.
The power of being in the majority is so heady for politicians who want positive change that Feingold abruptly canceled his fledgling presidential campaign and Moore spurned attempts to woo her to run for mayor of Milwaukee.
Nationally, the biggest loser among Wisconsin politicians was Milwaukee area Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner.
Sensenbrenner, as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was the moving force behind the failed Republican strategy of attempting to mine racist hatred of Latino immigrants for conservative white votes. Like another unscrupulous Wisconsin politician who tried to tar political opponents as "soft on communism," Sensenbrenner attempted to use "soft on immigration" and "soft on terrorism" as a one-two knuckle sandwich to clobber the Democrats.
The only immigration bill Sensenbrenner would consider sought to imprison 12 million people and build a totally worthless 700-mile fence between the U.S. and Mexico at an absurd cost of millions of dollars per mile. The Sensenbrenner strategy failed so spectacularly that not only were Republicans routed from both houses of Congress, but Latino voters for decades to come will join African-Americans in remembering which party turned its back on them.
Sensenbrenner will lose his chairmanship in the new Congress, and, in a political move that some media failed to report, Republicans further punished Sensenbrenner by shutting him out of any leadership role as ranking Republican (vice chairman) of any committee in Congress.
Back in Wisconsin, the winners and losers were just as dramatically obvious. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle didn't just defeat Republican Congressman Mark Green to win re-election. Doyle crushed him.
Another very big winner was Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton. Lawton won four more years to continue doing what she's done the last four - tirelessly travel the state promoting progressive causes and building future support as the bright political star most likely to make history as Wisconsin's first woman governor.
One of the few Democratic losses - the curious loss by Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk to an empty suit Republican for attorney general - sidetracked the political rise of another talented woman who was perhaps Lawton's strongest rival to succeed Doyle.
The crowd of Republican losers was so enormous in the state that Green was just an also-ran. Green's statewide appeal was never more than a figment of the raging, Doyle-hating imaginations of the hard right. But there were even bigger Republican losers than Green.
John Gard, the Republican leader of the state Assembly, hijacked the entire Legislature to pass toxic legislation aimed solely at enhancing his own right-wing credentials to run for Congress. Then Gard left the Legislature only to be beaten by a Democratic political novice, Appleton doctor Steve Kagen, in the 8th Congressional District.
Then there was Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher. Bucher combined the ugly, anti-immigrant excesses of Sensenbrenner with a Willie Horton-style Web site attacking Democrat Falk for being soft on rapists and murderers, especially black and Latino ones. The result was so repellent that J.B. Van Hollen, Bucher's Republican opponent for attorney general, spoke for many Republicans and Democrats in a publicly broadcast debate when Van Hollen proclaimed: "You suck, Paul."
Perhaps the biggest Republican loser was Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, who lost simply by standing still. This was the year Walker was supposed to parlay his tax freeze political posturing into the governorship. Instead, Walker couldn't even raise enough money to challenge the lame Green candidacy.
Now Walker's stuck back in Milwaukee County, where the financial problems keep getting ever more disastrous and the County Board has enough votes to override anything Walker does.
No wonder the Bush administration has a new-found concern for the polar bear. Suddenly, Republicans can identify with endangered species.
No biases in this writer. LOL!
Screw this guy! All his people do is raise taxes and spend.
Oh this is rich.
Maybe if Republicans politician could get back to their conservative roots, they could "fix" the next election.
This single phrase tells all there is to know about how misquided these people are. THE RICHES DON'T BELONG TO THE GOVERNMENT YOU MORON, THEY BELONG TO THOSE WHO PRODUCE THEM.
Jeremy Bentham would be so proud ...
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