Fantastic news. The recall for Walker in Wisconsin needed about 550,000 signatures; a couple of hours ago about 1 million were turned in; in addition the recalls against 4 Republican state senators, including Scott Fitzgerald, the Republican Senate leader (about 30% over what was needed in his case) have gathered more signatures than needed. Signatures will be challenged, no doubt, but its unlikely that challenges will be successful. Prediction: once the Dems get a candidate this will be the most vicious, highest spending, election in Wisconsin history. I’ll provide links for non millionaire out of staters to help counterbalance the contributions of multi millionaire out of staters when the time comes.
{ 19 comments }
A Conservative Teacher 01.18.12 at 12:46 am
Just goes to show what liberals can accomplish if they spend millions of money- they can get 500K to sign a recall petition (half the signatures will be thrown out- there were a lot of ‘Mickey Mouse’ and ‘Elvis’ signing on to the recall). The money probably could have been spent better elsewhere, but one thing is sure- liberals sure are good at getting people into a divisive partisan frenzy to go after people who they have political differences with!
StevenAttewell 01.18.12 at 2:18 am
It’s a good sign, given that Walker won in 2010 with 1,128,941 votes. But I’ll keep knocking on wood anyway.
Belle Waring 01.18.12 at 2:46 am
W00t! Great news.
Timothy Scriven 01.18.12 at 3:46 am
@Conservative teacher
Actual statistics suggest that the fake/doubled up signature rate is more like 5-20% and will most likey be closer to 5 than 20 in this particular case, but there’s nothing quite like inventing statistics is there?
Alan 01.18.12 at 4:32 am
“liberals sure are good at getting people into a divisive partisan frenzy to go after people who they have political differences with!”
Mapping the territory where self-mocking is a province of irony.
js. 01.18.12 at 6:06 am
I’ll provide links for non millionaire out of staters to help counterbalance the contributions of multi millionaire out of staters when the time comes.
I’d like this. Obviously, I can figure out how to give money to the Dems (I think?), but I’m thinking you have something better or more specific in mind?
Also, is the first comment for real? Really real?
Balakirev 01.18.12 at 6:37 am
Of course it isn’t for real. But teabaggers think putting “teacher” or “doctor” or “Ph.D” in a silly statement somehow gives it validity. Hint: it doesn’t.
That noted, I see no reason to believe that the large number of signatures will automatically translate into a similar number of votes to oust Walker. All it means is that his occupancy of the governor’s chair will go before the voters, again, where a legal loophole has already allowed him to take any amount from any individual donor for his campaign chest for two months. More importantly, the signatures gained on a number of other races indicate that several GOPers in the state senate will be up for re-consideration. That might tilt a couple of seats to the other side, and paralyze Walker’s agenda. Couldn’t happen to a nicer hack.
I just wish the Dems were worthy of such support, but in several cases they’re just corporatist puppets. Remember, it was the Dem leadership in the state house that enabled Walker to get fed funds his inept budget slashing would otherwise have lost to Wisconsin. They even held a press conference afterwards congratulating themselves for having saved Walker’s ass–for which they should have had their own burned.
StevenAttewell 01.19.12 at 2:01 am
Yes, because Wisconsin Democrats didn’t leave the state or do signature-gathering at all. /sarcasm
And the reason they must be corporatist puppets is that they wanted the cuts to be less bad? So the right thing to do is to let things get even worse, nevermind the material impact this will have on ordinary people who need public goods and services?
phosphorious 01.19.12 at 2:06 am
A. . . conservative teacher? Unheard of! But, I suppose such a rare, contrarian hero should be listened to with extra care.
What other patronizing and dismissive things do you have to say about liberals?
A Conservative Teacher 01.19.12 at 12:14 pm
Yeah, personal insults- haven’t heard those from liberals before!
My point was that instead of spending the money and getting everyone all partisan and divisive, perhaps the unions could have used this money more wisely. Here in Michigan, our teachers union dumped $200K into an effort to recall a state legislator that they didn’t like, someone who only serves a 2 year term- and then the union turned around and asked for higher dues from members, didn’t run any television commercials to support our positions, and had no money to donate to local candidates. They wasted their money, much like they are doing in Wisconsin.
Also, many of you left-wingers are bragging about how it is a MILLION signatures- as in that the number of signatures that you got signifies that you are right. My point was that that million number is inflated- I’ve read reports that 40-50% are fake, someone on here said up to 20%- but my point is that it isn’t a million, and to brag as such is to obscure reality.
Jeffrey Davis 01.19.12 at 2:11 pm
” and getting everyone all partisan and divisive”
Love that “getting.” Because before the recall there hadn’t been any divisive partisanship.
Harry 01.19.12 at 2:49 pm
Walker thought he could get his bill through in a couple of weeks without much opposition. Remember, it was a major piece of legislation for which he had no mandate at all, having somehow forgotten to mention it during the (then recent) campaign in an election he won rather narrowly. He’s a young man in a hurry, and there is no question in my mind that he thought quick success with a bold move like this would put him on the national stage and make him a potential VP candidate in 2012. Like Walker, and like everyone I know on the left in Madison, I was stunned by the strength of the opposition; there really was no reason to anticipate it. I don’t think this is well understood by conservatives (or even perhaps anyone much) outside the state: the Wisconsin protests were pretty spontaneous, and truly massive in scale (see my posts from the time which explain this) and the organisers/leaders were always running to catch up. Walker and his colleagues, by contrast, do understand that: they were on the ground. Walker refused to negotiate or budge at all on his bill; the only change he made was that he stopped dissembling about it and divided it from the budget bill so he didn’t need the quorum that a fiscal bill requires. So there is no question who was the initiator of partisan division. It was Walker. But it was inadvertent; I doubt he’d have done it if he’d understood that it would result in him having a recall rather than a VP election in 2012.
There are, apparently, something like a million signatures. Of course, some of them will, rightly, be thrown out (though I have to say that the gatherers I know were extremely diligent about checking every person who signed). But the time and effort is the same whether some of the signers were trying to sabotage the process or not; what is impressive, and frightening to the Walker camp, is that a grassroots effort could be powerful enough to generate that much time and energy in so little time and in winter! (I suspect that the unusually mild winter is responsible for about 100,000 of those signatures myself, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles…). Everything now turns on whether the Dems can get themselves a candidate, which is a nontrivial task, imho.
Salient 01.19.12 at 5:09 pm
What other patronizing and dismissive things do you have to say about liberals?
ACT is an Internet-wide supertroll, as well-known as Seth Edenbaum; let’s please not respond to a drive-by by asking him to get out of the car.
Harry 01.19.12 at 5:17 pm
If you look at what he says about himself on his site, you’ll note that modesty is not one of his vices.
Blain 01.19.12 at 6:47 pm
This news certainly brightened my week!
Now if only Feingold would reconsider his decision not to run…
Kenny Easwaran 01.20.12 at 12:27 am
I’ve heard that Democrats aren’t allowed to raise money for the campaign until the signatures are certified and there is an actual candidate. However, surely there is a Super PAC around that is planning to help the Democrat. Can we be helping this Super PAC in the meantime? (I mean, as long as Super PACs exist, we might as well be helping the ones on our own side fight back against the ones on the other side.)
DDG 01.20.12 at 12:31 am
It has become amazing to me how many of these absolutely diversionary “conservative” trolls there are; complete with made-up stats aand “it’s not really a million” type of arguments. I wonder sometimes if they realize how absolutely silly they sound.
Balakirev 01.20.12 at 4:00 am
Yes, because Wisconsin Democrats didn’t leave the state or do signature-gathering at all. /sarcasm
Read for content, Steven. I said the Wisconsin House, not its Senate.
And the reason they must be corporatist puppets is that they wanted the cuts to be less bad? So the right thing to do is to let things get even worse, nevermind the material impact this will have on ordinary people who need public goods and services?
If the cuts had gone through as Walker’s budget proposed them, the loss would have been around $800 thousand in fed money–hardly chicken feed, but nothing in a state budget that includes roughly $4 million for state-based funeral and burial services alone of indigent Medicaid recipients. The real loss, if Walker’s faux pas had gone unabated, would have been the egg on his face, the incompetency he displayed in handling a budget that lost good federal money. And the house Dem leadership took great pride in saving his ass for him, per comments they made at a press conference at that time.
Good Dems are a treasure. Bad Dems wh0 help out bad governors and take note in advance of where the GOP will vote so they can not object too loudly might as well change parties, for all the good they do their ostensible side, in my opinion.
A Conservative Teacher 01.22.12 at 3:18 pm
Okay, got it- even though I’ve responded several times over a week ‘I’m a troll’, and I’m not modest- these sorts of personal attacks are not the same thing as ‘logic’ and ‘reasoning’ though.
Call it 600-1000K partisan liberals signed on to a petition to recall Walker- that’s pretty good, that’s almost near the same number that voted against him a year and a half ago. I guess this means that he is done- oh wait, he got more votes than that FOR him only a year and a half ago- he’s probably not done, especially if the election date they choose for the recall is a general election and not a primary election.
The money, time, and effort could have been used more wisely to help out the working man and teachers and Americans. This whole witch-hunt was misguided and vindictive- recall elections were put in place historically to go after corrupt politicians, not people whom you had political differences with. The recall effort should not be supported or celebrated, as many of you are doing.
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