With Tea Baggers in Control, Can Moderate Wisconsin Republicans Survive?

The election of President Barack Obama last fall and the accompanying reaction from the extreme right wing worsens the condition of moderate Republicans. Here in Wisconsin, especially around metropolitan Milwaukee, where right-wing talk radio with Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling sways listeners, moderate Republicans continue to come under siege.

Now we see that on a national level the problem is worsening.

Tea partiers turn on GOP leadership

Whether it’s the loose confederation of Washington-oriented groups that have played an organizational role or the state-level activists who are channeling grass-roots anger into action back home, tea party forces are confronting the Republican establishment by backing insurgent conservatives and generating their own candidates — even if it means taking on GOP incumbents.

As we noted last August, Democrats, Libertarians, and No Republicans, Oh My

 ...(they) are not Populists in any sense of the word, they are libertarians...

...The Tea Baggers and the town hall protesters are really about reshaping the fundamental premise of our government. That is a challenge for the Republican Party. They will not quit until they either control the GOP or bolt to the Libertarian Party lead by Sarah Palin.

The real challenges for progressives and moderate republicans is finding their common ground. It will require positional shifts for both, which they need to accomplish anyway.

The left must realize there is a role for capital and that profits are not evil.

For moderate Republicans, it means accepting reasonable regulation in areas like financial services, consumer protection, and safety. It means putting distance between them and the far right.

The left and the moderate Republicans must recognize (this list is far from comprehensive):

• the existence of global warming and that we must do something about it.
• the need to integrate every American into the workforce.
• the value in education and training and the value of investment in infrastructure.
• the critical importance of the quality of the environment.
• the role of the government in protecting heath and safety.
• the need for limits to international trade until all markets are subject to the same labor and environmental standards.
• the need to welcome development that is compact and that makes transit systems more efficient.

Comments

[DFH]

"The left must realize there is role for capital and that profits are not evil."

What part of the mainstream American left, or to put it in the partisan terms of this post, of the Democratic Party, doesn't already realize this? You're setting up a false equivalency to make yourself sound more "reasonable". Sorry, but it's the Republicans that need to clean up their ideological act, not the Dems. They merely need backbones.

[PRS]

Sorry, DFH, but from where I sit, I find many Democrats who do not understand the risks involved in investment whether it is development or businesses. I will concede that there are some conservatives that suffer the same problem but they are more likely to be tea baggers than moderate Republicans.

[Anti-Sprawl Andy]

DFH, if you want to current evidence that Paul Soglin is correct, look at the idiotic press release that Jack Norman of the Institute for Wisconsin's Future released today. These folks have absolutely no idea of how a capitalistic society works. God help us if Jack Norman is put in charge of anything as there will be no for-profit business left in Wisconsin. Jack apparently believes that every adult in Wisconsin can work for one unit of government or another.

[R.J.]

"The left must realize there is a role for capital and that profits are not evil."

The productive-sector thanks you for letting that which has made the U.S. the greatest country in the history of this planet have "a role".

[Alderman Steve]

"The productive-sector thanks you for letting that which has made the U.S. the greatest country in the history of this planet have "a role"."

Methinks R.J. has taken one hit too many off The Bong of Historical Rightousness...

I'd like to think R.J.'s world view would include the working men and women who actually did the work building this great country, but sadly he veers of into John Galt Crazyland, a place where Bill Gates and John D. Rockefeller stride like titans and the folks who actually wrote the code and refined the oil serve merely as bit players.

Did you just stop reading books after "Atlas Shrugged"?

[R.J.]

Fine, lets instigate $100/hr wages and a 25 hour work week for all...not just public employees. We'll be able to walk to China, hopping from ship to ship.
How many millionaires has Bill Gates created? ...and all with out a coup d'etat.

[Alderman Steve]

"Fine, lets instigate $100/hr wages and a 25 hour work week for all...not just public employees. We'll be able to walk to China, hopping from ship to ship.
How many millionaires has Bill Gates created? ...and all with out a coup d'etat"

I am more than happy to laud Bill Gates' achievements as an entrepreneur and businessman (as a software visionary, not so much. This is the guy who thought the Internet was a passing fad back in 1996.) But without the army of Microsoft employees who actually designed, wrote, tested, and marketed his company's products there would be no wealth created. It was a collective enterprise. Bill Gates couldn't have done it on his own.

The kind of slavish adulation you embrace has more in common with the vassal's reverence for a feudal lord rather than a free man's regard for a successful businessman.

[R.J.]

I guess this is the season for straw men.

I think Gates is a jerk (Steve Jobs is too)...so what? What gives me the right to tell him how to run his company? What gives you the right?
I'm sure you exclusively use Linux, a reverse-engineered hack of an OS created by AT&T, another evil profit entity.

[Alderman Steve]

Let us review: Paul Soglin asserts that liberals should acknowledge that "there is a role for capital and that profits are not evil"

You reply: "The productive-sector thanks you for letting that which has made the U.S. the greatest country in the history of this planet have "a role"."

I point out that iconic capitalists like Bill Gates and John D. Rockefeller would never have made their mark but for the contribution of armies of workers who write and test the code and pump, transport, and refine the oil.

You reply: "lets instigate $100/hr wages and a 25 hour work week for all...not just public employees. We'll be able to walk to China, hopping from ship to ship.
How many millionaires has Bill Gates created? ...and all with out a coup d'etat."

At no point do you acknowledge the point Paul is making, that entrepreneurs should be allowed to create and keep wealth, but in so doing they have responsibilities to the larger community that makes such wealth creation possible. Billionaire Bill Gates gets this. Billionaire Warren Buffet gets this. You don't.

Instead, you trot out one tired Teabagger rant after another that does not address anything Paul actually said.

You close with: "I guess this is the season for straw men."

Pot. Kettle. Black.

"What gives me the right to tell him how to run his company? What gives you the right? "

Well, there's the First Amendment. Y'know...one of those constitutional rights that make this country so great.

Or are you one of those folks who think capitalism is more important than the constitution and the bill of rights?

[Hieronymous]

Have any of those among the righteous Right who partake in the exercise called "teabagging" ever looked up the term to see what it refers to?

[R.J.]

Think about the implication of the following statement Paul wrote (which I did respond to in my very first post and remains my point).

"The left must realize there is a role for capital and that profits are not evil."

How far left must the statement's target audience be? I don't know anyone that would frame capitalism in such a way that it needed to be begrudgingly justified. In my world profits are the very reason for any company's existence, not an unfortunate symptom.

Teabaggers? Do you think it's an admirable quality to have first known the meaning of the term in order to use it to name-call the Tea Party movement?