Posted on 09/18/2011 2:55:57 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
We all know the Republican Party has changed in recent years.
Tommy Thompson's bid for the U.S. Senate may tell us how much.
On Monday, Thompson will incorporate his Senate campaign committee, he said in an interview. That allows him to start raising money, and means a filing of candidacy should follow by early next month.
But the real personal and political drama will unfold in the months to come, as the former titan of Wisconsin politics makes his case for a comeback, and deals with questions from conservatives within his own party.
"I'm the original conservative," said Thompson on Saturday. "Nobody should ever doubt my conservative credentials."
The fact that some do is partly a reflection on Thompson and his mix of conservatism, pragmatism, big-tent Republicanism and government activism, a highly personal blend that has often enthralled but sometimes exacerbated the right.
It's also a reflection on his party. Only a decade ago, Thompson ended the longest tenure as governor in the state's history as an utterly dominant figure in the Wisconsin Republican Party with a national reputation as a conservative policymaker.
Today, he's being attacked as a "big-government Republican" by the national Club for Growth, a conservative group that takes sides in GOP primaries. His ideological bona files are prodded and picked over on talk radio. And a new set of conservative heroes in Wisconsin (Gov. Scott Walker, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan) are setting the party's policy agenda in ways that Thompson is forced to react to.
Absent the uncompromising ethos and small-government, tea-party ardor of today's GOP, a vigorous debate among Wisconsin Republicans over Tommy Thompson's fidelity to conservative principles would be hard to imagine.
At the same time, Thompson enjoys the lingering goodwill of party leaders, activists and donors who experienced the Republican renaissance in Wisconsin that he engineered in the last decade and a half of the 20th century.
Thirteen years after his last election victory, the 69-year-old Elroy native is betting that his big personality, zest for campaigning, flair for fund raising, bulging resume and popular legacy will overwhelm his critics and party rivals. And they may.
But if they don't, if somehow Mr. Republican struggles to win a party primary, that would be as striking a political statement as any next year about the current mind-set of GOP voters.
Changes to GOP
In a recent effort to break down the U.S. electorate, the Pew Research Center said one of the biggest changes its surveys detected in the past few years is the "emergence of a single bloc of across-the-board conservatives. The long-standing divide between economic, pro-business conservatives and social conservatives has blurred."
Those voters prefer uncompromising politicians, are deeply mistrustful of government and are highly fixated on cutting deficits and spending, Pew found.
Interviewing Thompson earlier this month, conservative Milwaukee talk radio host Mark Belling said the people who listen to his show are enamored of "new generation" conservatives like Ryan, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ron Johnson, Wisconsin's freshman senator.
"You're a hard sell for them. You represent a different era of Republicanism," said Belling. Paying tribute to his political past but questioning his political future, he told Thompson, respectfully, "You were a builder, and we might now be in a dismantling period."
Johnson said in an interview last week that he has reserved judgment about Thompson's candidacy and may or may not take sides in the GOP primary. Only one GOP candidate has so far declared, former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann, but others say they plan to run, including Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald of Horicon.
"Obviously, I'll acknowledge (Thompson) has some problems," said Johnson, a political newcomer who personifies the new zeal in the party for cutting government. "I mean, the Club for Growth running ads against him right off the bat, exactly what his stance on Obamacare was, that's going to be an issue. He'll have to answer those questions. That's an appropriate thing for a primary to sort out."
Part of Thompson has to be incredulous that his conservatism is in question.
"When I (first) ran for governor, they said I was too conservative," says Thompson. "I (won) as a conservative candidate, not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. . . . We rebuilt the Republican Party in the state of Wisconsin."
As a state legislator in the 1970s, he ran radio ads saying, "Tommy Thompson believes there is too much spending, too much government and too much state control." In a failed 1979 bid for Congress, he opposed revenue sharing, foreign aid, the Panama Canal treaty, U.N. funding and recognition of Red China. He was once against mandatory seat belt laws.
By his second term as governor, however, he confessed in an interview, "I'm not as conservative as I once was. . . . You grow on your job. . . . It's much better to use pragmatic common sense than be so rigidly tied to one ideology you can't see the forest for the trees."
Today, Thompson is trying to make a multilayered case to GOP voters.
Part one is that his record as governor is more conservative than his critics say. He'll tout his pioneering work on welfare reform and school vouchers, his tax cuts, his voluminous spending vetoes. Critics will complain about the growth of spending and the state work force. Thompson will say spending grew because he built prisons and boosted school aid to cut property taxes, and had to contend for years with a Democratic Legislature.
"If that's not a conservative record, I don't know what is," he says. "I think my career has been based upon making government better and more efficient with less tax dollars."
Part two is that he understands times have changed and many Republicans are demanding major entitlement reform and smaller government.
"There's no question I was a builder," Thompson told Belling. "But times right now require a different type of leader."
Part three is that government experience still counts for something, that somebody "who understands the system" (Thompson oversaw Medicare and Medicaid as health secretary in the cabinet of President George W. Bush) is the right person to "fix" it.
And part four is that electability matters.
"I can bring people to the Republican Party, and I think - I know - I can win the state," he said in Saturday's interview.
Which of those arguments resonates with GOP votes - and how much - will determine whether Tommy Thompson sails to victory in a GOP primary or runs into stormy weather.
RINO
I’d vote for Neumann — but I’m not from Wisconsin. I’ll SUPPORT Neumann. I HOPE Wisconsin will. But if Thompson wins the primary? Well, he’d be better than the Progressive Democrat alternative. The questioin is, would Thompson be GOOD ENOUGH to do what’s necessary at THIS POINT in American history to save our Republic?? I’d say the jury is OUT — but I have SERIOUS doubts — about him, and ALL “Establishment Republicans.”
Bottom line is this.
If a more conservative candidate wins the nomination, I’m voting for that candidate.
If Thompson wins, I’m voting for Thompson.
Tammy Baldwin is the most liberal representative in Congress, and a lesbian on top of that. She needs to go down hard. They’d finally love a win in WI and that will not happen with this vile, filthy, thing running.
Agreed - anyone but Baldwin in November.
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