By James Wigderson
Special Guest Perspective for The MacIver Institute
As exuberant as Wisconsin conservatives were to learn former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney picked as his running mate Janesville Congressman Paul Ryan, Wisconsin’s lefties threw a snit. Reaction ranged from digging up dead Democrats to making fun of Ryan’s deceased father.
At Sunday’s “Homecoming Rally” in Waukesha for Ryan and Romney, Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner warned that Democrats would say anything to try to attack Ryan.
“Let’s be perfectly frank. President Obama and his supporters will stop at nothing, nothing at all, to smear Governor Romney and Paul Ryan to win at any cost,” he said. “They will use fear, they will use misrepresentation, they will use outright lies to achieve re-election.”
As if it was a command performance a few protestors had embedded themselves in the audience to shout, ‘What about Sensata?”
Sensata is a company that is partially owned by Bain Capital, the company Mitt Romney once led. Romney’s no longer in charge of Bain Capital, and Bain made their investment in Sensata after Romney stepped down. Nonetheless grassroots leftists are attempting to hold Romney accountable for the company’s decision to move jobs to Mexico.
Since there can be no public event in Wisconsin without some leftwinger heckling from the crowd, the protestors had to shout something, no matter how irrational. Maybe if they could have found something better to shout there would have been more than seven of them on the corner outside the event before it began.
The protester count: seven on the outside, three on the inside of the rally. As expected, however, they received their disproportionate share of news coverage.
From on-site protests, off-site press conferences and cheap press releases, now it’s Ryan’s turn to be irrationally attacked.
Scot Ross, who lost a race for Secretary of State to Doug La Follette before managing Kathleen Falk’s recent failed run for Governor, remains executive director of the fascist-sounding One Wisconsin Now (OWN). Wallowing in the mire of failed elections past, Ross dragged a former Ryan opponent from the grave and declared, “Someone should let Paul Ryan know that Joe Biden ain’t no Jeff Thomas.” Conservatives are salivating over the probable Ryan-Biden debate, but Ross was apparently serious.
OWN followed that up with a ridiculous demand that Ryan pick either the race for the House of Representatives or the race for Vice President, completely ignoring state law. See, Ryan is already on the ballot for congress. Should Ryan and Romney win, a special election will be held in the district, so the residents there need not worry about a lack of representation.
Sly Sylvester of WTDY (who also gets a level of press disproportionate to his meager listenership) said that had he been asked three years ago if a Wisconsinite were selected by a major party to run for Vice President, Sylvester said he would have been proud. That’s not the case with the selection of Ryan, and he feels ashamed for Wisconsin. Before we remind him Illinois has proven a safe harbor for Democrats before, we might ask Sylvester which Republican would he have found acceptable three years ago when the only Wisconsin Republican being talked about nationally was… Paul Ryan?
Sylvester topped himself in the same broadcast on Monday. One caller said he was proud that Ryan came Wisconsin the same way Jeffrey Dahmer’s father must have been proud. At least Sylvester found it funny.
Not to be outdone by his caller, Sylvester went after Ryan’s late father in a mocking tone. “By the way, this is the other mantra we’re going to hear, ‘My father died. My father died. My father died. ‘Yech.'”
On Twitter, in between attacks on the non-issue of Sensata, union front group Wisconsin Jobs Now! (Now! Now! Now! oh, the urgency of these leftists) contributed to the debate on the issues of the day, “Now accepting estimates: How much money do you think the Romney/Ryan ticket will spend on hair product this election?” Apparently WJN has moved from class envy to hair follicle envy.
But the last word goes to Ed Garvey, who is still around and still angry. Ringmaster of the annual Fighting Bob Fest drum circle of Wisconsin lefties, Garvey took a sad trip down memory lane. He warned his readers to take his comments with a grain of salt (don’t we always?) because Ryan once worked for Senator Bob Kasten, who was one of the many individuals who beat Garvey in an election over the years. Raise your hand if you’re over thirty-five and you’ve voted against Ed Garvey in an election, primary or general, at least once.
Garvey sneers on his website at the size of the crowd that gathered at the Waukesha Expo to welcome home Ryan. “I watched the carnival in Waukesha and it would stretch credulity to say there was a big crowd.” Right, that’s why one television reporter told me traffic was backed up all the way to the freeway exit, Senator Ron Johnson needed an escort from the police to make it on time to give his speech, and it took me an hour and a half to get home from a rally that took place five minutes from my house.
Denial, tasteless personal attacks and heckling. In case you were wondering, Wisconsin’s left hasn’t learned a thing from the recall election.