Monday, January 2, 2023

Watch for the GOP "two-step" in 2023 between MAGA + reality, both in Wis and the House

As we prepare for Governor Evers' 2nd term and the terms of a new group of Congress members to start tomorrow, let's look at if things are going to change at all this year.

Personally, I maintain a small optimism that we see a little less of the Crazy Train in 2023, especially since MAGAts did worse in the Upper Midwest swing states like Wisconsin, where we had firsthand experience with the threat and the awful consequences that would have followed from voting GOP at the state level in 2022.

There is no better example of the two-step Republicans are stuck in than the words and planned actions of Assembly Speaker Robbin' Vos. I actually think Vos has core beliefs, in that he wants right-wing, privatized BS in all corners of Wisconsin, with an entrenched oligarchy in both business and politics, with little chance of anyone else outside of that Club being able to succeed.

However, telling the overwhelming majority of us that we have to accept a second-class situation isn't going to win elections, so he has to try to trick MAGAts and low-info voters with cultural BS in order to have Republicans win. So he gave symbolic words and actions that gave the appearance to RW BubbleWorld that the Legislature wanted to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election, even though he knew the Big Lie was BS all along.

The same type of Vos double-talk is happening when it comes to the upcoming budget debate and new Legislative session. Sometimes he acknowledges that Evers' convincing victory means that WisGOPs can't repeat the "stamp their feet and not try to agree at all" strategy that they frequently pulled from 2019-2022.
“We have the choice to either continue the arguments that happened in the past, and we are really good at that, or to kind of hit the reset button and move forward, so I'm choosing the second option,” Vos explained. “We want to hit the reset button and focus on the future, not argue about the past.”

For Vos, there are three main priorities when it comes to spending: education, inflation, and innovation.

“We can argue about why we have the pandemic and the mistakes that were made, but that really doesn't matter anymore,” Vos said. “We just had this massive influx of federal money that was spent by our local school districts, and it looks like it had almost no impact on learning. That's what my concern is. That just putting a bunch more money into the system without some kind of real reforms isn't going to do enough for our kids. [The] second bucket is we have got to deal with inflation. I could again argue about the Biden administration, all the federal spending, but that doesn't really matter to Wisconsinites. And then the last issue we really got to focus on is innovation. We have a problem in Wisconsin with our demographics, we are, our birth rate is below the national average, we are not getting in that migration, we have a lot of jobs to fill. Now, 30 years from now, we are going to have a choice if we don't do something today. That is a dramatic reduction in services or a big increase in taxes, and I don't want either one, so I think we have the opportunity to do innovation, sharing of services and do it in a way that is bipartisan.
I may not agree that Vos's solutions are on the right track, but at least there could be a spot to agree on what the reality is. And that in itself would be an improvement over what Republicans have been like for quite a while.

And then in the next breath Vos will turn around and say big-government, cynical resentment BS like this.

Throw in this reality from November's election, and expect more tap-dancing from WisGOPs, and not just by Robbin' Vos.

And that's before we get the prospect of a new Supreme Court justice clearing the way for the WisGOP gerrymander to get thrown out, and GOPs could be facing quite the squeeze play in this state.

Then add in the train wreck that we are sure to see from when the GOP takes control of the House of Representatives in DC laster this week. Well, I should say "if the new Republican majority can agree on a Speaker of the House this week."

“He’s part of the swamp cartel,” GOP Rep. Bob Good said of McCarthy and predicts on Fox that 10-15 Republicans will vote against McCarthy tomorrow. He says there will be a new candidate who emerges on the second ballot. “You’ll see that name tomorrow on that second ballot.”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 2, 2023

Add that to the reality that a deciding number of GOP House members represent districts (and states) that didn't vote for Donald Trump in 2020.

But Kevin McCarthy or whoever ends up being Speaker needs MAGA Republican House members in order to stay in power, which means they will have to do MAGA BubbleWorld BS. So what do those 18 House members in Biden districts value? Their 2024 election prospects, and American voters that have tired of MAGA BS? Or do they care more about what a MAGA-dominated GOP wants to do (and in reality, waste time about) that will tick off a whole lot of people?

There's still not been nearly enough of a repudiation at the ballot box, especially in this state (gerrymandering and Hendricks/Uihlein lies in the US Senate race have a lot to do with that, but still). However, I do think enough voters have had it with MAGA-ness, and if GOPs care more about the 30%er MAGAt base over the 70% of the rest of us, they're setting themselves up for some bigtime losses in the next 2 years.

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1 comment:

  1. Jake formerly of the LPJanuary 2, 2023 at 7:44 PM

    And if you want more proof of how this works, take a look at Robbin' Vos' testimony to the January 6th Committee. He knows that the Big Lie stuff is BS, knows it was pointless to try to overturn the election, but was glad to listen to any conspiracy theorist and talk numerous times to Trump because "people were saying there were concerns with the election." Vos even mentions that he wanted to cut off the Gableman Committee earlier in 2022, but Trump and other MAGA groups would be angry, and so he continued with the charade.

    Also notice that Vos didn't talk to the 1/6 Committee until after the 2022 election, when the Big Lie BS backfired with voters. What a weenie.

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