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Jan 13, 2011
The state’s new Republican leadership burst through the gate Jan. 3 with a bizarre legislative agenda that represents a sharp turn away from the job-creation rhetoric spouted by GOP candidates during last fall’s campaign.
Republican lawmakers introduced a flurry of bills that reflected eight years of pent-up conservative anger. From their first hours in power, GOP members signaled that their governing agenda would be set by the lunatic fringe.
Most of the measures proposed by Republicans are laughably obscure, including bills that seek to allow off-duty police officers to carry guns in schools; eliminate Election Day voter registration (a thinly veiled strategy for suppressing black voter turnout); use taxes to penalize embryonic stem cell labs; permit homeowners to kill intruders; repeal bans on Native-American mascots; end state regulation of elevators; and allow children under 12 to operate snowmobiles.
It’s impossible to imagine how this mixed bag of nutty ideas will help achieve Gov. Scott Walker’s promise to create 250,000 new jobs.
What all of these haphazard ideas share is the philosophical stamp of the Tea Party movement, which seeks to eliminate all functions of government except those that shovel tax-free cash into the craw of the military-industrial complex. That’s of great concern to us, because racism and homophobia are foremost among the Tea Partiers’ rallying points. In fact, judging from the militant rhetoric displayed at their demonstrations, the Tea Party resembles nothing so much as a hate group.
This bodes poorly not only for the LGBT community and other minority groups, but for all of Wisconsin. The Tea Party represents a step backward into a time of Wild West shoot-outs, political assassinations, sweatshops and unrelenting environmental destruction. As demonstrated by their first day in power, tea partiers want to eradicate consumer protections, building codes and all sorts of other regulations that are essential to the functioning of a modern society.
We hope that calmer heads will soon prevail. The GOP must distance itself from the Tea Party’s wild-eyed belief that the liberty of wealthy white heterosexuals can only be achieved by the violent dismantling of Western civilization.
Otherwise, the Republican’s midterm victory will be short-lived, but their damage to the state will be long-term and extensive.
