Dan Balz: National GOP Rancid - Echoed in Wisconsin

On graphic display in the Wisconsin Assembly budget debate last week is the Republican demographic demise. GOP failings in Wisconsin echo those nationally.

Says Dan Balz today in his For Republicans, the Forces Aren't With Them in the Washington Post.

The American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution convened a stellar cast on Friday to review what has been learned since November. The panel included Robert Lang of Virginia Tech; Ruy Teixeira of the Center for American Progress; William Frey of the Brookings Institution; Bill Bishop, a Texas writer and author of ‘The Big Sort’; Scott Keeter of the Pew Research Center; and Ronald Brownstein of Atlantic Media. They presented a wealth of data about what happened in 2008 and offered conclusions that would alarm any Republican hopeful of a quick turnaround in the party's fortunes.

Wisconsin mirrors the nation in setting off Republican political alarms.

Wisconsin is a political anthology of the demographic trend Balz discusses as the GOP problem with blacks and Latinos persists with the GOP still behaving in an overtly hostile manner towards these communities that comprise fast-growing segments of the electorate, with “black women [having] the highest voter turnout rate in November's election -- a first". [See Dissecting the 2008 Electorate: Most Diverse in U.S. History.]

Says Balz:

In the last election, there were more than 2 million additional African American voters, about 2 million more Hispanic voters and about a million more Asian American voters. All are groups in which Obama increased the Democratic share of the vote over 2004. Frey estimated that minority voters in nine states made the difference in Obama's victory margin.

Republicans can't reverse the demographic trends; their only solution is to increase their share of the minority vote. Opposing Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's Supreme Court nominee, because of her pride in being a Latina won't help solve that problem.

So what is the response of Wisconsin Republicans like Mike Nichols, Patrick McIlheran and other GOP talking heads?

Mocking and scapegoating, for example, obnoxious and unanimous Wisconsin GOP opposition to Democratic initiatives on immigrant driver licenses and collecting racial profiling data.

The GOP message to African American and Hispanic voters veers from we don’t like you to you don’t belong here to you’re on your own.

As Balz implies, this isn’t a winning political strategy anymore, never mind its fetid taste.

During the budget debate, Jim Doyle, Tamara Grigsby and Pedro Colón have been the collective punching bag of the GOP looking to stir up white resentment on the economy and to place the blame for the last eight years of national economic catastrophe on one Wisconsin governor and minority constituencies—this has been the GOP playbook since the Southern Strategy.

But Doyle, Grigsby and Colón appear quietly confident that this old divisive tactic is not working.

The future looks bright for a political message based on unity, civil rights and inclusion, geared especially to younger voters who are diverse demographically, less religious, culturally liberal, and less susceptible to GOP racist appeals.

Mike Nichols Is Clueless on Racial Profiling

Update: See also Threat and Humiliation: Racial Profiling ... , Amnesty International ... Wisconsin's protection from racial profiling: "None".

Rightwing columnist Mike Nichols has made it clear: There is no racial profiling in Wisconsin and certainly not in Milwaukee suburbs.

Collecting data that might support or disconfirm this conclusion is a waste of time.

Nichols is shocked, shocked by Pedro Colón's (D-Milwaukee) "startling accusations" that dark-haired, dark-skinned people are pulled over while driving with dark hair and dark skin.

You might think Colón and Rep. Tamara Grigsby's (D-Milwaukee) (pictured above) defense of a new requirement approved by the Joint Finance Committee mandating police tracking of the race of the people they pull over is a no-brainer.

But not to Nichols, a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist, who can't be troubled with innocent people being persecuted. [See Bill Christofferson's Should we admire prosecutor who sees crime where there is none in which Nichols defends the prosecution of the innocent Georgia Thompson. See also The proven-innocent Georgia Thompson and Biskupic tried to 'squeeze' Georgia Thompson for additional background on the prosecution.]

Writes Nichols at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI):

I think this is going to be interesting because it sounds like Pedro Colón doesn’t just have one name [of a minority being pulled over], he has lots of them. After all, he says, 'all the guys' complain. Everyone knows what’s going on. That’s 'just the way it is.'

In reality land every dark-skinned, dark-haired person who I know takes it as a fact of life that police pull you over if you're dark-skinned and dark-haired in a white community. It's a humiliating and abusive experience that's painful to talk about.

How far removed from reality is Nichols that he doesn't know this? That he smirks and repeatedly ridicules the notion in his column?

But a rigorous empirical investigation is called for, i.e. collecting data. As Nichols demonstrates many lily-white Republicans are clueless that racial profiling actually occurs.

Nichols demands names and data. But data is exactly what Colón and Grigsby are mandating. So what is Nichols' objection with collecting data?

Noting the race of the person next to the sex police field report on a statewide basis is not a hardship for anyone who cares about defeating racism.

You just have to wonder how someone like Nichols can be so isolated to what is common knowledge in minority cultures and progressives fighting racism. Is this guy really that dumb?

And what is he and GOP afraid of and whom are they are protecting? I'll stand with the darkies.

Silent Pol Speaks Up, Hits State Rep. for Law Defending Rape Victims

The phantom southside Milwaukee candidate for state assembly, José Guzmán, is at last revealing himself contending with his recruitment by the political operative, Tom Reynolds, the notorious former state senator known for his anti-Catholic views and often bizarre political behavior.

After weeks of silence, Guzmán is meeting criticism of his campaign by finally speaking to the press, and accusing one of his opponents, incumbent Democratic State Rep. Pedro Colón (Eighth Assembly District, Milwaukee), of being "anti-catholic" for his vote for the Compassionate Care for Rape Victims bill, signed into law by Gov. Doyle in March.

Guzmán criticized Colón for his vote, saying Colón voted for "anti-Catholic legislation ... against the people of the 8th Assembly District." [See Guzmán literature above.]

Guzmán is now dropping 100s of pieces of literature in an attempt to appeal to voters in this low-turn out district.

Reynolds is the founder and administrator of his political organization, Clean Sweep Wisconsin, that has been disavowed by both the Democratic and Republican Party establishment.

The Compassionate Care for Rape Victims act guarantees rape and incest victims immediate access to emergency contraception in emergency rooms.

Guzmán has until recently avoided press queries and a questionnaire from the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin as he attempted to avoid mention of his association with the radical Reynolds whom he met at church.

Clean Sweep Wisconsin is running right-wingers in six Democratic Assembly primaries in metropolitan Milwaukee, it was confirmed here July 25th.

The Eighth Assembly District on Milwaukee's south side is the most Catholic district in the state.

Guzmán is running against incumbent Democratic State Rep. Pedro Colón and Laura Manriquez, who tried to have both Colón and Guzmán knocked off the ballot in a challenge that was unanimously rejected and panned by the Wisconsin General Accountability Board earlier this summer.

The Compassionate Care for Rape Victims act was a major victory for women and rape victims, as Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin writes:

Victims of rape or incest deserve immediate access to safe, efficient methods of pregnancy prevention. Compassionate Care for Rape Victims ensures that this occurs by requiring all Wisconsin emergency rooms to provide rape victims with information about and access to emergency contraception.

Guzmán says in his literature that "the founder of Planned Parenthood was a racist who wanted to use abortion to exterminate minority populations”.

Rightwing Radio Takes off on Pedro Colón

You can tell a lot about a political candidate by the enemies he or she makes.

In Pedro Colón's (D-Milwaukee) run for the Milwaukee City Attorney’s race, Colón has gained the enmity of the usual suspects on rightwing radio.

Both Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling ripped into Colón Monday though not offering any argument against his candidacy.

Of course, Colón who lists among his supporters the Milwaukee DA, the City’s legislative caucus, and US Rep. Gwen Moore, also gets an occasional hit from those upset by his successful advocacy of a sexual harassment victim. The nerve of that Colón!

And Colón is campaigning for the City Attorney’s office advocating that he would work with other officials to flush out the law protecting Milwaukee citizens so that citizens would be better served by the actions of their government and the police. What nerve this uppity Hispanic has!

The naysayers are unpersuasive.

Reads the Shepard-Express endorsement:

Colon’s ideas would take the city attorney’s office into the 21st century by working with other levels of government, especially on reducing crime and nuisance properties; training police officers to respect the rights of citizens while making arrests; fighting to fix the school choice funding flaw, which currently penalizes city taxpayers; finding fair solutions for residents who have had their driver’s licenses taken away; and personally advocating for the city when important lawsuits arise.

Amen to Colón's efforts to make government serve the people it is supposed to serve.