Posted on 07/17/2015 12:17:41 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
PHOENIX, Ariz. — There’s no love lost for any of the 2016 Republican presidential contenders at the 2015 Netroots Nation confab, but attendees reserve a special kind of loathing for one candidate in particular: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
It’s an understandable sentiment given the setting. This year’s edition of the annual convention of liberal activists is heavily focused on bread-and-butter economic issues, with a strong union presence. The AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association have booths set up near the center of the convention hall, and many of the other booths are focused on one economic topic or another. Two large American flags with rainbow stripes instead of alternating red and white hang from the LGBT Netroots Connect booth, an indication of how forcefully gay rights are defended here.
All of which makes this a very hostile crowd for Walker, who regularly trumpets his victories over public-sector unions in his home state, and now weaves his opposition to the Supreme Court’s recent same-sex marriage decision into his stump speech as well.
“Scott Walker is probably the most dangerous of the Republicans in my opinion. And that’s just my opinion,” Dan O’Neal, the Arizona state coordinator for the Progressive Democrats of America, said. “He and Bush are probably the two most dangerous in terms of competing with Bernie or Hillary.”
It’s not that there are any warm and fuzzy feelings toward the rest of the GOP field, but it’s Walker who stirs the most negative passions among liberal activists.
“I mean, if you look at the records, Scott Walker has destroyed the economy and it’s been devastating for workers there,” Stephanie Taylor, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said on Thursday as she sat in a conference room alongside Adam Green, the other founder of the liberal political action committee. “I would hate to see that happen to America.”
Green quickly interjected, saying Walker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are the least appealing of the bunch. “But that’s not to say we could live with the other ones,” he added.
This year, Netroots attendees sporting pro-Bernie Sanders buttons are everywhere (on Thursday, it was hard to find a Hillary Clinton logo), and none of them had positive things to say about Walker.
And just as Sanders, with his unabashedly pro-labor views, fires up his left-leaning supporters, Walker’s union-busting boasts send them into paroxysms of rage.
“To me he looks like a little twerp,” said Fred Koegel, a retired member of the Iron Workers of Chicago Local 11 union. “He looks like the kid that hired the bullies in the schoolyard to protect him. That’s him, OK?”
“The direct attacks with unions are the kinds of things that really fire up this portion of the left,” said Andrew Rothman, the head of creative and delivery at the Democratic consulting firm Blue State Digital. “When you’ve got a portion of the party who’s already feeling like they’ve been pushed and marginalized to some extent, of course they’re going to feel —hackles get raised when you get backed into a corner.”
Rothman also pointed to reports of Walker being the “chosen boy” of the powerful Koch brothers as a focal point of liberal fury.
“As we see the Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic party rise, that makes people even more riled up about the Koch brothers,” Rothman said. “The Koch brothers and the candidates that they support are the exact opposite of that.”
There’s still plenty of animosity to go around for the rest of the Republican field, though.
“I hope they nominate Trump, personally,” said Patricia Pelfrey, a liberal activist and Sanders supporter. “None of them are acceptable in any shape or form and I don’t think Hillary would have any trouble beating any of them — Bernie would not have trouble beating any of them.”
Things I really want in my 2016 Republican nominee.
1) Love America the way it was between saving Europe in WWII and saving the world when the Berlin Wall came down.
2) Mean what he/she says and say what he/she means.
3) Drive the liberals nuts.
Not necessarily in that order.
Scott Walker this week...
Someone else as soon as the email comes in...
“...You try to picture Bernie Sanders in office and you can’t, because it’s a place he won’t be. You and I know that. However, virtually every white person, under forty, that I know can picture it.
Sander’s base is kids. Usually white, usually urban. Usually art school students....”
http://streetcarnage.com/blog/callow-youthful-socialist-crowd/
“destroyed the economy and it’s been devastating for workers”
Got to find out their definitions of “destroyed”, “devatasting”, “economy”, and “workers”. I suspect they’re a lot different than what you’d find in a dictionary.
I think its very curious that the liberal netroots nuts would go to Phoenix. Aren’t good liberals supposed to boycott Arizona because they had the audacity to pass that immigration law? Don’t these liberals know they are supposed to boycott people and places which don’t match their Utopian standards?????
“I mean, if you look at the records, Scott Walker has destroyed the economy and it’s been devastating for workers there,” Stephanie Taylor, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said on Thursday as she sat in a conference room alongside Adam Green, the other founder of the liberal political action committee. “I would hate to see that happen to America.”
So, Netrooters are idiots? Is there a maximum IQ requirement? Like 52?
"Marshalltown, Iowa — ‘All foreign-made vehicles park in designated area in rear of building.” So reads the sign in front of United Auto Workers Local 893 in Marshalltown, Iowa, though nobody is bothered much about the CNN satellite truck out front, a Daimler-AG Freightliner proudly declaring itself “Powered by Mercedes-Benz,” nor about the guys doggedly and earnestly unpacking yard signs and $15 T-shirts and rolls of giveaway stickers from a newish Subaru, all that swag bearing the face and/or logo of Senator Bernie Sanders, the confessing socialist from Brooklyn representing Vermont in the Senate who is, in his half-assed and almost endearingly low-rent way, challenging Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. The bumper stickers on the mainly foreign-made cars of his followers tell the story: One of those “Peace” (not the more popular “Coexist”) slogans made of various world religious symbols, “Clean Water Is for Life!” and “The Warren Wing of the Democratic Party,” sundry half-literate denunciations of “Corporate Oligarchy” . . . “Not Just Gay — Ecstatic!”
The union hall, like the strangely church-like auditorium at Drake University the night before, was chosen with calculation. Bernie — he’s “Bernie,” not Senator Sanders or Mr. Sanders or that weirdo socialist from Soviet Beninjerristan, just lovable, cuddly “Bernie,” like a grumpy Muppet who spent too much time around the Workers World party back in the day — our Bernie may not be the slickest practitioner of the black arts of electioneering, but he’s got some smart people on his small team, and they are smart enough to book him in rooms with capacities that are about 85 percent of the modest crowds they are expecting, thereby creating the illusion of overflow audiences. They do all the usual tedious stuff, such as planting volunteers in the audience to shout on cue, “Yes, yes!” and the occasional Deanesque “Yeaaaaaaah!” It’s all very familiar. Sanders, as stiff a member as Congress has to offer, repeatedly refers to the audience as “brothers and sisters,” and the union bosses greet one another as “brother,” and you get the feeling that after a beer or three one of these characters is going to slip up and let out a “comrade.”....
I love how people use “workers” in a way that seems to imply highly successful people don’t work. By “worker” the left means “sucker we can manipulate and use for our own purposes and pursuit of power.”
She means he killed unions and government boondoggles. Boo hoo.
If a candidate doesn’t drive the leftards into a slavering, convulsing, howling, puking, chewing-their-own-lips-off, full-blown “Exorcist” seizure, that candidate is not morally fit for office.
Good!
Netroots are welcome to hate Scott Walker even after he loses the nomination.
The Democratic party has essentially become a lobby for unionized government employees. No wonder they respond to Walker the way vampires do to crucifixes.
Wisconsin's unemployment rate is currently 4.6%. The devastation to the workers is that teachers have to pay a small percentage of their pay towards their retirement.
In Wisconsin we saw Walker break up the unnatural and unhealthy partnership between the teachers union and liberal elected officials. The teacher's union donated to the liberal politicians who then crafted cozy contracts for the unions. It was classic "pay to play" in both directions.
The liberals and teachers (I repeat myself) hate Walker with an uncommon passion.
Bernie Sanders Despised Dems In 1980s, Said JFK Speech Once Made Him Sick (Kennedy’s anti-communism)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/3313000/posts
Jesse Ventura backs Bernie Sanders for president
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/3312973/posts
Only Three of Twenty Presidential Candidates Are Message Carriers (Cruz, Sanders and Trump)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3312251/posts
Netroots Convention features Scott Walker haters. (Unions; teachers; leftists)
FReep Mail meif you want on, or off, this Wisconsin interest ping list.
but... but... you'd roll back all this wonder progress we've made - especially over the past seven years! No, we need to move forward.
(When leftists speak of "progress" they mean "regress" back to barbarism: favoritism toward barbaric religions, executing babies and selling their body parts, barbarically changing men to women and vice versa...)
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