Tornado Alley (PROG)

[decouverte d Elbe]

It’s been 10 years since Thomas Frank grabbed our attention with “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” In his book, Frank, a journalist and historian, described how his native state, once a hotbed of left-wing populism, had moved down a radically different path.

In many respects, what Frank described in Kansas was the ascent of the tea party some five years before the movement took its name in direct response, it seems, to the election of our first African-American president.

Frank wrote that Kansas conservatives had succeeded in shifting the focus from issues like economic fairness, which would seem paramount with the middle class, to social issues like gay rights and abortion. Villains in his saga were the “liberal elite” of that state.

In the years that followed, Kansas became such a reliably red state that President Obama lost there by more than 20 points in 2012.

But times change.

A front-page story in the New York Times last week noted the earlier political reputation of Kansas. “This is a state that once had a tradition of centrist Republicans. … But much of this moderation went by the wayside as (Gov. Sam) Brownback and conservative majorities in the Legislature turned the state into a laboratory for the policies they had run on.”

Sound familiar?

Anyone who has witnessed Wisconsin politics since 2011 will recognize that playbook: massive tax cuts skewed toward the affluent, pro-gun legislation, restrictions on abortions, efforts to make it harder to obtain public assistance. In Kansas, the tax cuts have created a $1.3-billion state budget hole over the next five years that must be fixed through spending cuts or added revenue, according to the Times.

But this tea party fever shows signs of breaking in Kansas, where draconian far-right policies may be repudiated by voters. “Conservative experiment faces revolt in reliably red Kansas” reads the Times’ headline. The story’s anecdotal first paragraph features a crusty, 68-year-old Kansan, a man who cannot recall ever voting for a Democrat, lamenting how Brownback is “leading Kansas down.”

The story explores how Brownback finds himself this fall in a tight re-election contest against a Democrat from Lawrence, that state’s version of Madison, a liberal bastion with a state university. Mostly, it focuses on how noteworthy it is that Brownback could be in such trouble in such an emphatically red state.

Likening the embattled Brownback to Gov. Scott Walker, of course, is a short leap, and it’s a theme that left-leaning bloggers in Wisconsin have been promoting for months. A key difference, of course, is that centrist Wisconsin has never been regarded as a red state like Kansas.

If Brownback loses, it will likely be on his economic and budget failures, not on social issues, and so, I suspect, will the gubernatorial election be decided in Wisconsin.

With polls continuing to show that Democrat Mary Burke and Walker are deadlocked, I was pondering a provocative analysis in Foreign Affairs headlined: “Halfway there … Why the left wins on culture and loses on economics.”

In it, Georgetown University historian and author Michael Kazin says the gay rights movement has won major victories because leaders have effectively leveraged support by organizations and cultural icons. (That progress on gay rights would certainly include Wisconsin.)

Not so on the economic justice front, he writes. With the decline of labor unions, Kazin contends progressives lack both cohesive messaging and institutions that can effectively spotlight economic disparity issues, even though many agree with their positions. The voices of deep-pocketed conservatives dominate.

Given that, Burke should continue to demonstrate her readiness to lead, certainly, but she should trumpet Walker’s colossal fiscal failure as chief executive because of his manically partisan approach.

That case can be reduced to two numbers — $1.8 billion and $700,000.

The $1.8 billion is the structural budget deficit estimate through 2017 recently provided by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Walker has spent years bragging about how he fixed a state that was “broke.” He cut taxes to mostly benefit the wealthy. A study of three major tax cut packages published by the Wisconsin Budget Project this summer said the top 20 percent of earners — averaging $192,000 annually — would get the same share of cuts as the other 80 percent combined.

Walker paid for those cuts by taking resources from public schools and infrastructure investment, harming the interests of constituents but helping him pass any tea party litmus test.

What’s worse is that the $1.8 billion does not even include another $1 billion in new agency requests disclosed last week and it also does not include education and transportation requests, which could create a deficit larger than the one Walker proclaimed as calamitous when he assumed office.

The other figure is $700,000, which is the amount the Gogebic Taconite mining company contributed to a conservative political organization that then supported Walker in the 2012 recall election. Walker’s obviously related advocacy for a Gogebic mine in northern Wisconsin compelled an investigator in the John Doe probe to suggest the “appearance of corruption.”

Both numbers fit a narrative about Walker — that his core constituency is a group of wealthy, self-interested funders willing to bend rules. He has made that clear since his first days by clearly rejecting the state tradition of reaching out to all citizens, even those who voted for his opponent. Walker didn’t reach out then, and he doesn’t now.

Left off my list is 250,000, the number of jobs Walker promised to create but will not within his term. That topic has created a torrent of claims and counter-claims, but the smartest people I know generally dismiss that whole thread as a red herring. Governors never had nor ever will have a significant impact on the rate of job creation, they say.

So, in Walker, you have two simple, over-arching images.

One, as a budget conniver who has so aggressively cut taxes for his donor class that he has created — even in an improving economy — an unnecessary fiscal crisis while choking investment in schools and public improvements. Two, as a politician who has produced a persistent scent of corruption new to Wisconsin.

As that eloquent gentleman in Kansas might say, Walker is taking his state down.


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Sam Brownback, Scott Walker, Paul Fanlund, Gogebic Taconite
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