Jack Kelly on Wisconsin

Jack Kelly doesn't care.

This week Jack Kelly talks about Tuesday's recall election in Wisconsin. He starts by complaining that a headline from an unidentified collection of news sources "Walker survives recall in Wisconsin," is not vindictive enough. Kelly snarks about Reagan beating Mondale, Nixon beating McGovern, but doesn't say what the headline should have been (kind of weaseling out of actually telling us what specifically he believes).

By the way, Kelly weasels later when he tells us "A caller to a Washington D.C. radio station Tuesday said he was on his way from Michigan in a union-organized four bus caravan to vote in Wisconsin." without any verification or even telling us which radio show. A vague accusation that is impossible to verify, but I strongly suspect it will make the rounds of right wing blogs and Fox News.

But what most impressed me is that Jack Kelly admits Walker had much more money than Tom Barrett, but then says that Democrats outspent Republicans "in last year's recall elections, in their attempt to oust a conservative state Supreme Court justice and in the petition drive to force the election Tuesday.". Jack Kelly doesn't say how much was spent by Democrats or Republicans, or how much was spent in the 2010 general election. And perhaps most importantly, Jack Kelly doesn't mention how much of Walker's money for this recall came from out of state and/or wealthy donors.

Of course, the hidden subtext of this whole discussion is the Obama/Romney fight upcoming. Republicans have learned/verified that they can buy an election, even getting people to vote against their own interests with a candidate less likable than Ronald Reagan. Just barrage the State/nation with six times as much money as raised by the opposition.

The economy is still struggling, and Obama deserves his share of the blame for that. But so too do Republican Senators since 2006 and Representatives since 2010, with their absolute opposition to anything the Democrats propose. Still, States cutting funding for a half million public sector employees when unemployment is so high ... the only way Republicans can spin that is to point out it allows taxes to be cut (in a time of decreased revenue because of the recession!). Of course, we may all remember that the GOP (I believe Paul Ryan) has suggested that the payroll cut for the middle class was not useful at all, what we need is greater tax cuts for the top 1% (even though person income tax rates for the 1% are are at their lowest pretty much ever). Somehow that justifies putting a half million people out of work in this time of high unemployment.