Readers of Waxing America, at least a certain element, are starting to lose it. Comments about the Supreme Court race, which are opened and uncensored, except for personal attacks and slime, reveal that we have attracted some right-wingers who are prone to weak thinking.
It started the day after the election. My analysis of the election and the effort to learn from it brought this response:
- Losers make excuses. Winners get the job done.
Obviously the Right does not like it when the Left learns from its defeats and tries to improve in anticipation of the next election.
The suggestion that Butler could win under the right circumstances (and we do have two Democratic Senators and a Democratic Governor) elicited this rebuttal:
- ...vast bulk of Wisconsin is a conservative state. To see a conservative elected shouldn't surprise anyone who looks at the big picture. ..and
- ...What this should be conveying to you Paul, is that the state is slowly tipping more right than left.
Many, including the conservative Wisconsin State Journal, not just those on the left, are considering appointed judges as a better route to a qualified judiciary. I observed that if Butler got steamrolled that was an option, but I was withholding judgment. My own preference is simple disclosure as to where the issue committees get their money:
- Have you noticed...when a democrat loses an election...the process was corrupt, the campaign was nasty, and feelings were hurt!!!!!
When a democrat wins, then the process doesn't need to be "fixed"???? Of course Pauly,* you and your ilk (lefty stooges) will want to take the vote away from Wisconsin citizens. This is where We The People are allowed to judge the judges.
Some of the harshest judgments were attributions to things never said:
You liberals just can not accept defeat, can you? If liberals win, all we hear about is "a new day" and "the voters have spoken" and that it's "time to move on". But if conservatives wins, it's evil, nasty, racist, sexist, white men cracking their whips again and more government reform is needed to clean up the evil, nasty, racist, sexist system...
But my favorite was this bon mot from someone claiming to be Fraley:
You don't like the outcome of a contest and want to avoid losing again...change the rules! Nice motto. So which is it, Paul? Wisconsin voters are: 1) Racist 2) Stupid 3) Not worthy of the honor of selecting judges
Those are the only three options the whine brigade has before them. Until you settle on one option, I guess we can just assume you think it's all three?
This Fraley, borrowing from the worst of the Communists, under the guise of freedom, allows the accused of making choices, choices from his limited world view.
- Wisconsin voters are not racist, but the advertisements taken out by the Gableman fellow travelers were.
- Wisconsin voters are not stupid, just witness the election of our United States Senators and Governor, and the fact that next fall, both houses of the State Legislature will be Democratic.
- And certainly Fraley is not accusing the Wisconsin State Journal, most of the other dailies in the State and many prominent Republicans of not trusting the voters, when they called for the appointment of judges long before the outcome of Tuesday's election was known. Or is he?
Update Sunday, April 6, 2008. Not knowing when to quit, Jim Widgerson jumper into the fray, Paul Soglin embracing another Wisconsin tradition McCarthyism.
Wrong. Fellows, McCarthyism is accusing someone of being a Communist without any evidence and not allowing the accused to confront the accuser.
What you guys are searching for is 'red-baiting.' That is where you focus on guilt by association. For example, if Barack Obama attends a specific church, you suggest that he supports all of the positions held by the leader of the church.
Or, for example, if extreme terrorists elements want the US out of Iraq, then any American who wants the United States out of Iraq has to be at best a terrorist sympathizer and at worst, a terrorist.
Now where have we heard that?
*I believe the correct spelling is P-a-u-l-i-e
Paul,
Gee, your favorite...I'm so honored!
And, yes, I am accusing the State Journal and anyone else advocating for 'merit selection' of not trusting the voters.
Attempts to take their franchise away shows a lack of trust, I believe.
And my assertion still stands. The collective whine of those who supported Butler can be broken down into those who think the voters are either racist, stupid, or shouldn't be able to vote for judges in the first place.
Posted by: Fraley | April 05, 2008 at 09:16 AM
I hope professional ethics is not an oxymoron. The money in judicial campaigns is unquestionably a contradiction to a rule of law. We now have a rule of monied persons who pay for the laws and those who judge them in an untrammeled pursuit of special interests. Democracy is a slogan for electioneering made legitimate by PR and advertising.
Waxing is waning more and more in the newspeak and groupthink of money.
Posted by: jim guilfoil | April 05, 2008 at 11:27 AM
For my part, I haven't seen an honest conservative since Warren Knowles died.
Posted by: nonheroicvet | April 05, 2008 at 12:13 PM
For my part, I haven't seen an honest conservative since Warren Knowles died. If there are any remaining, they are awfully quiet or maybe embarrassed by what passes for conservative these days. ( oops - looks like I hit the wrong button there)
Posted by: nonheroicvet | April 05, 2008 at 12:17 PM
The "collective whine" responding to these posts seems to come uniformly from the right wing. The "get over it", "winners win" name calling ("lefty stooges") and other clichéd aphorisms remind me more of the sandbox chatter among six year olds than constructive thoughts from adult members of our society.
Is this what passes for political discourse back home in Wisconsin these days?
Posted by: ARS - expat cheesehead | April 05, 2008 at 12:31 PM
The "collective whine" responding to these posts seems to come uniformly from the right wing. The "get over it", "winners win" name calling ("lefty stooges") and other clichéd aphorisms remind me more of the sandbox chatter among six year olds than constructive thoughts from adult members of our society.
Is this what passes for political discourse back home in Wisconsin these days?
Posted by: ARS - expat cheesehead | April 05, 2008 at 12:31 PM
Elections in Wisconsin are just like they are in any state in America: auctions about a set of perceived personality traits generating by (mostly television) advertising. Issues are practically irrelevant as poll after poll has shown that voters cannot correcly identify ANY policy position their preferred (or their opponent's) candidate holds. And since elections are about personalities, that usually guarantees that when you have new leadership you roughly have a new quarterback running essentially the same play. There are exceptions, but those are usually at the margins.
This is why you can have a state like Wisconsin elect an eminently qualified progressive like the excellent Russ Feingold at the same time it has a stunningly average right wing hack like Tommy Thompson as governor.
Posted by: Brian | April 05, 2008 at 12:49 PM
Let's face it. Louie Butler lost because he was a soft on crime liberal loser, just like you Paul.
Posted by: raul | April 05, 2008 at 03:23 PM
I look forward to a waxing america discussion on public financing of elections vs. merit appointment of judges.
Posted by: Katrina | April 06, 2008 at 12:34 PM
Here is what I am finding interesting.
In 2000 and 2004 the Democrats were running around stating that "Every vote should count" and that millions upon millions of voters were "disinfranchised"
Fast Forward to 2008 and now the battle cry appears to be we need to appoint our Supreme Court Justices.
So which way do you want it?
Posted by: Michael J. Cheaney | April 06, 2008 at 04:16 PM
Michael, you know that one has nothing to do with the other. Thousands were intentionally disenfranchised in the first election. In the second instance, both conservatives and liberals are rethinking how Supreme Court justices are selected.
Posted by: Tim | April 06, 2008 at 07:33 PM
Hey conservative types - comparing the apples of 2000 and 2004 presidential election voter fraud with the oranges of Supreme Court elections betrays your simplistic conception of the world around you. Also, you should spell "disenfranchised" correctly when arguing from a point of alleged intellectual superiority.
Seriously? We're *electing* justices? How would conservatives like it if there were a national popular vote referendum on Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas? That probably wouldn't turn out so well for you guys.
I would bet you $1000 that an overwhelming majority of Wisconsin voters from last Tuesday couldn't tell you what kind of issues the State Supreme Court handles. They couldn't tell you the difference between two philosophical approaches to jurisprudence. And they couldn't tell you why Mike Gableman is qualified or unqualified to be a judicial scholar on the high court.
Electing legislators and executives (and by proxy, their appointees) is very different than electing judges. They handle different parts of the system of democratic republican governance. Democracy does not simply equal voting. It is also about the protection of fundamental rights and liberties, which is subject to the auctioneering system of "elections" we have in this state and this country. When future historians of another era excavate the figurative rubble of our society, they will look at the actions of conservatives, Big Business, and the theocrats in the realms of public affairs and peg the dates of our downfall.
The Supreme Court "election" of 2008 is another example of the shortcomings of our democracy - not the will of the people. We are still obligated in this Constitutional system to protect the rights and liberties of minorities (no conservatives, I'm not talking about literal minorities like scary black and brown people). Majority rule only works with the protection of the minority - and that is guaranteed through the courts. Mob rule through simplistic auctioning of seats on the high appellate court to the higest bidder, democracy this is not.
Posted by: Peter | April 06, 2008 at 10:33 PM