Wisconsin Republicans are fleeing for their lives. No one would ever call it a brain drain, but state Republicans, who not long ago boasted of their prominence in the conservative transformation of American politics, are suddenly tripping all over each other heading for the exits.
The surprise departure was Seventh District Congressman Sean Duffy, touted as the rising star of the next generation and a potential governor or U.S. senator. Duffy could even be the rare politician claiming he’s resigning to spend more time with his family who might actually be doing so. His wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, and he (who met as reality TV stars) are more focused on real life at the moment. They will be dealing with extremely serious family health problems from a heart defect afflicting their ninth child who will be born next month.
The decisions of former Gov. Scott Walker and former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan to leave the state without seeking any other office for the foreseeable future are complicated for more political reasons.
Walker’s exit from politics wasn’t voluntary, of course. Wisconsin voters showed Walker the door in 2018’s Democratic sweep of statewide elections that Republicans couldn’t gerrymander. Walker made some half-hearted noises about running for office again someday, but instead he’s taking strange political jobs that don’t exactly position him as a candidate of the future.
The first role Walker grabbed was as fundraising chairman for a rightwing Republican organization fighting the popular national movement to create independent redistricting commissions in an effort to end corrupt political gerrymandering of congressional and legislative voting districts. Even conservative states such as Arizona, Missouri, Utah and Ohio are creating non-partisan commissions to draw voting boundaries because politicians invariably do it dishonestly to perpetuate their own power.
Walker’s even stranger job announcement is that, in two years (talk about delayed gratification), he will become president of Young America’s Foundation in Virginia. That’s an obscure, 40-year-old, rightwing youth organization that merged eight years ago with the even more decrepit Young Americans for Freedom from the 1960s. Support among young voters for Donald Trump’s Republican Party is deservedly miniscule, but it’s hard to imagine the low-key Walker, a notorious college dropout who vanished in Republican presidential debates, firing up American campuses.
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The Speech Paul Ryan Never Gave
The greatest political speech Paul Ryan never gave—described by Politico reporter Tim Alberta in the book American Carnage—was the one he planned on election night 2016. Ryan’s state colleague, Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, told him earlier in the day Trump was getting wiped out. Ryan prepared the speech of his life denouncing Trumpism once and for all and presenting himself as the shining knight to restore decency and integrity to the Republican Party.
Needless to say, that speech stayed in Ryan’s pocket. Instead, Ryan, ever the opportunist, praised Trump’s surprise victory as “the most incredible political feat I have seen in my lifetime,” gushing that Trump “heard a voice out in this country no one else did.” Who cared that it was a vicious, racist voice as long as Republicans won the presidency? He then spent his final years in office shamelessly groveling before Trump, passing reprehensible legislation to destroy health care for millions of Americans and violating what he’d sworn was his most sacred political principle by creating the largest government deficits in U.S. history in order to give enormous tax cuts to the wealthy.
Ryan, another politician claiming his resignation was to spend more time with his family, is now moving his family to Washington, D.C., where he’ll spend a lot more time cashing in on his political connections than playing ball with the kids. He’s keeping the mansion formerly owned by the founder of Parker Pen in Janesville, Wisc., as a possible fallback in state politics whenever the embarrassment of those last two years in congress fades. Ironically, Ryan’s joined the board of a Janesville medical technology company that would be far less successful if Ryan had succeeded in destroying health care for 23 million people. A more obvious fit is Ryan’s new position on the board of Fox Corp., the parent company of Fox News.
As Wisconsin’s best-known Republicans make their getaways, no obvious replacements are coming out of the Legislature. It all goes back to gerrymandering. When Wisconsin voted against state and national Republican policies in the backlash midterm election building toward 2020, it had no effect at all on the state’s corruptly gerrymandered Legislature.
That’s why Republican are still hellbent on blocking popular policies supported by the majority of Wisconsinites, including expanding health care, taking intelligent steps to reduce gun violence and, yes, ending dishonest gerrymandering. Republican legislators are willing to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to prevent Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Atty. Gen. Josh Kaul from performing the jobs voters elected them to.
Opposing everything your state’s voters want is a terrible way to try to build popular support.
