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Scott Walker as Sen. Joe McCarthy
Shepherd Express - Milwaukee ^ | March 4, 2015 | Joel McNally

Posted on 03/03/2015 11:32:48 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife

It’s time to consider whether Gov. Scott Walker is intentionally employing the brazenly dishonest tactics of Sen. Joe McCarthy, who previously held the title as the most dangerous national politician to come out of Wisconsin.

Since the 1950s, right-wing Sen. McCarthy has been the worst stain on both Wisconsin politics and the Republican Party nationally. McCarthy achieved that distinction by getting an entire, shameful era in U.S. politics—the McCarthy Era—named after him.

McCarthyism turned the ’50s into a reckless, anti-Communist witch hunt as Wisconsin’s Republican senator made wildly irresponsible, untruthful accusations about Communists subverting our government (the moderate Eisenhower administration!), our military, our schools and our entertainment industry.

Victims included hundreds jailed for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) about their personal political ideals and associations. Perhaps tens of thousands more were fired or blacklisted as actors, screenwriters, playwrights, government employees, educators and military professionals, often merely for rumors they held left-of-center political beliefs.

It may seem odd to compare Walker, a sober preacher’s son who’s perfected a bland façade of earnest sincerity, to McCarthy, a drunken, extravagantly bombastic thug.

Yet there were obvious parallels that thrilled Walker’s audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the nation’s largest annual gathering of its most wild-eyed, right-wing extremists.

That was the speech in which Walker hilariously compared standing up to hundreds of thousands of protesting school teachers, nurses, correctional officers and other public employees being stripped of their union rights to defeating the bloodthirsty Middle Eastern terrorists of ISIS.

“If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world,” Walker boasted to wild cheers.

Walker apparently doesn’t know the difference between democracy and terrorism.

Walker is partly right that hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin workers occupied and surrounded the Capitol for weeks after Walker pulled a surprise attack with a law to destroy their union collective bargaining rights, an attack that he never mentioned during his election campaign.

Yet there wasn’t a single beheading in Capitol Square. Walker was the only one threatening people’s lives.

Any massive protest includes a few overly obnoxious jerks. Back in the ’60s, we always assumed they were agents provocateurs working for the government. Walker admitted he’d considered planting such troublemakers in the crowd during an infamous phone call recorded by an imposter pretending to be billionaire David Koch.

But overwhelmingly, Walker’s victims merely sang songs, gave sincerely impassioned speeches and chanted: “This is what democracy looks like!” The governor somehow found that threatening.

It’s actually the most American thing citizens can do in a democracy. The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees free speech and public assembly by citizens petitioning their government.

Some people call the recent series of ridiculous, untrue public statements by Walker “gaffes.” Stuff like he doesn’t know whether President Obama loves America, he doesn’t even know if Obama is a Christian and he thinks murderous Islamic terrorists are just like union members who object to Walker destroying their rights.

But they’re not gaffes at all. They’re deliberate, intentionally false statements Walker delivers to carefully selected audiences to attract support from hateful extremists who really do believe Obama is a foreign-born enemy of America and union members are violent terrorists.

Pretending To Be a Hero

There’s another dishonest purpose served by Walker’s McCarthyism. He pretends to be a courageous hero of the extreme right boldly vanquishing the awesomely powerful forces of leftist evil controlling America.

There was nothing particularly courageous or even difficult about destroying public employee unions in Wisconsin or supporting a right-to-work law to weaken private unions. It was easy as pie.

Since Republicans control both houses of the Legislature, they pass whatever Walker wants with as little public discussion as possible.

Republicans seized that total control after the last census by so corruptly gerrymandering legislative districts that even when Democrats win more votes than Republicans in legislative races—which they regularly do—Republicans still retain a majority in both houses of the Legislature.

Walker intentionally employs the same dishonesty in his presidential campaigning.

Comparing Wisconsin citizens who disagree with him to barbaric terrorists clearly was no slip of the tongue. Walker made exactly the same comparison a few days earlier at his meet and greet in New York where he tacitly supported former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s vitriolic attack on President Obama’s patriotism.

Giuliani’s offensive remarks overshadowed Walker’s ISIS smear on the lawful assembly of his own citizens. So Walker tossed it out again to the angry rabble at CPAC.

It was only when the press began widely publicizing the ridiculous comparison that Walker retracted it and stopped repeating it.

McCarthyism was crude and sloppy. Walkerism is much more cunningly delivered with an innocent face and then quickly retracted after the dirty work is done.

Decent Wisconsinites fervently hope another shameless state politician doesn’t go down in history for wrecking democracy again during a Walker Era.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 2016; deathrattle; liberals; scottwalker
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To: Secret Agent Man

Every attack these scumbag socialists foist off on Walker raises his stature in my eyes. He’s still not my first choice, but he could be.


41 posted on 03/04/2015 1:39:33 AM PST by John Valentine (Deep in the Heart of Texas)
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To: Bobalu

Yes, his accuracy in seeking out Communists was very good. They report the hoopla, b!tching and moaning of socialists and communists back then and today, and tarnish him forever.

But he was right. And the left won’t even answer the evidence.


42 posted on 03/04/2015 2:28:33 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: noinfringers2

Yes, she is a power hungry opportunist with very innate socialist leanings.

At the time of the Watergate affair when she was on the congressional staff investigating Nixon, she advocated that Nixon had no Constitutional right to due process, its amendment protections or anything.

She was fired from the job by a Democrat for lying and unethical behavior.

http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/02/25/hillary-fired-lies-unethical-behavior-congressional-job-former-boss


43 posted on 03/04/2015 2:35:17 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Hey . The Left has a new line of attack on Walker — he’s a Republican from Wisconsin, just like McCarthy!!!

McCarthy attacked Communists. Walker attacks unions and university professors, which essentially are the same thing.


44 posted on 03/04/2015 2:40:29 AM PST by Opinionated Blowhard ("When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.")
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To: Gaffer
Hillary's thesis: There is only the fight": An Analysis of the Alinsky Model

August 2007:“There is only the Fight”".......In her alleged autobiography, Living History, Hillary explains the importance her thesis: “My senior year at Wellesley would further test and articulate my beliefs. For my thesis I analyzed the work of a Chicago native and community organizer named Saul Alinsky…I agreed with some of Alinsky’s ideas…but we had a fundamental disagreement. (Alinsky) believed you could change the system only from the outside. I didn’t.…my decision (to go to law school instead of training as an Alinsky organizer) was an expression of my belief that the system could be changed from within.” This is critical to understanding Hillary’s life plan. Also notable are the many things about Alinsky which did not cause Hillary to have “fundamental disagreement.”

Saul Alinsky (1909-1972) was one of the nation’s foremost community organizers, publishing several books and creating organizations which continue today. He gave a wide ranging Playboy Magazine interview shortly before his death. In it he gives a detailed description of his 1930s life as a communist fellow-traveler.

Alinsky told Playboy, “I knew plenty of Communists in those days, and I worked with them on a number of projects. Back in the Thirties, the Communists did a hell of a lot of good work…. Anybody who tells you he was active in progressive causes in those days and never worked with the Reds is a goddamn liar. Their platform stood for all the right things, and unlike many liberals, they were willing to put their bodies on the line. Without the Communists, for example, I doubt the C.I.O. could have won all the battles it did. I was also sympathetic to Russia in those days, not because I admired Stalin or the Soviet system but because it seemed to be the only country willing to stand up to Hitler. I was in charge of a big part of fund raising for the International Brigade and in that capacity I worked in close alliance with the Communist Party.".....

45 posted on 03/04/2015 2:44:13 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

I was aware of her background and her fondness for Alinskly. However, I think that the path and means she chose were really only to the extent that she could use some of the ideology and tactics to get the power and control that she wanted. She has no real ideals except power and money that she can get for herself.

She is a basic lying schemer who will say and do anything to get where she wants to be.


46 posted on 03/04/2015 2:54:47 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

Walker must really have them worried if they’re playing the McCarthy card this early.


47 posted on 03/04/2015 3:00:01 AM PST by Arm_Bears (Rope. Tree. Politician. Some assembly required.)
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To: Arm_Bears

At this clip, they should run out of cards by the end of the month.


48 posted on 03/04/2015 3:04:14 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
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To: DemforBush

Thanks for pointing out that historic conflation. I guess we shouldn’t expect any better from the loony Left. Unfortunately, it seems to be a theme they use repeatedly, a la their propaganda hero Goebbels.


49 posted on 03/04/2015 3:08:00 AM PST by T-Bird45 (It feels like the seventies, and it shouldn't.)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

>>It’s time to consider whether Gov. Scott Walker is intentionally employing the brazenly dishonest tactics of Sen. Joe McCarthy, who previously held the title as the most dangerous national politician to come out of Wisconsin.

Only dangerous for communists.


50 posted on 03/04/2015 3:25:31 AM PST by Bryanw92 (Sic semper tyrannis)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

I guess this ass has not read Whitaker Chambers “Witness”


51 posted on 03/04/2015 3:37:41 AM PST by ballplayer
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To: ballplayer

After “Witness”,he should try the Venona papers


52 posted on 03/04/2015 3:39:21 AM PST by ballplayer
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To: Bobalu

You are ABSOLUTELY correct.

If the liberals had not painted his as a baby eating monster our world would be much better off today.

He was right about liberals in general and hit the nail right on the head about Hollywood.

The same socialist actors of yesterday are replaced by new socialists today.


53 posted on 03/04/2015 3:45:12 AM PST by DH (Once the tainted finger of government touches anything the rot begins)
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

It is wonderful the way they have to stretch and contort. Let me add a couple. Scott Walker is like Emperor Ming the Merciless. Scott Walker is like Crabby Appleton.


54 posted on 03/04/2015 3:51:45 AM PST by jimfree (In November 2016 my 14 y/o granddaughter will have more quality exec experience than Barack Obama)
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To: Secret Agent Man

Looks like Wisconsin lefties have reached the foot stamping stage...


55 posted on 03/04/2015 5:01:16 AM PST by Eric in the Ozarks ("If he were working for the other side, what would he be doing differently ?")
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To: noinfringers2

Amen!


56 posted on 03/04/2015 5:11:17 AM PST by wastoute (Government cannot redistribute wealth. Government can only redistribute poverty.)
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To: Bryanw92

“Walker apparently doesn’t know the difference between democracy and terrorism.”....

He damn sure does know the difference, why does the author think he is running for POTUS? He wants to get RID OF the “terrorist” in Washington, then move to other countries, there by SAVING democracy.


57 posted on 03/04/2015 5:21:21 AM PST by DaveA37
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To: Bobalu

Thanks, I’m glad you got that in near the top.


58 posted on 03/04/2015 6:13:36 AM PST by Balding_Eagle (The Gruber Revelations are proof that God is still smiling on America.)
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To: pacpam

It was a great book and provided actual cites, vs liberal smears.

Largel, McCarthy was RIGHT.


59 posted on 03/04/2015 8:47:54 AM PST by SJSAMPLE
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To: Cincinatus' Wife

wildly irresponsible, untruthful accusations about Communists subverting our government (the moderate Eisenhower administration!), our military, our schools and our entertainment industry.

Commies on Parade,, Again!!

McCarthy was so spot on .. this gubamint and social networks are full of them.


60 posted on 03/04/2015 8:55:49 AM PST by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi - Revolution is a'brewin!!!)
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