The idea that you could remove the state\u2019s major population centers and still have an acceptably democratic result is a reasoning that gets to the heart of the matter. It\u2019s not just that Democrats are poised to undo gains made under Walker\u2019s administration, but that Democrats themselves are illegitimate because of who they represent. Vos isn\u2019t saying that Republicans should do better<\/em> in Madison and Milwaukee, he\u2019s saying that the state\u2019s major cities shouldn\u2019t count. And if they do count, says Fitzgerald, they don\u2019t count the same way.<\/p>\n The GOP’s understanding of who counts, and who ought to count, is tied to an urban and rural divide that encompasses divisions along race, economic class, education, and ideology. In The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness and the Rise of Scott Walker<\/a><\/em>, Katherine Cramer, a political scientist at the U of Wisconsin\u2013Madison, shows how the state\u2019s politics have been shaped by a rural sense of \u201cdistributive injustice\u2014a sense that rural folks don\u2019t get their fair share.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c(Their) sense of identity as people from a place that was disadvantaged economically coexisted with the perception that wherever their hard-earned money was going, it was not coming to them. It seemed instead to be going, in part, to bloated government programs and overpaid and underworked public employees.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s impossible to separate these views from racist attitudes and assumptions embedded in the ideologies and identities that shape white Americans everywhere. But that\u2019s particularly true of Wisconsin, which is \u201cextremely racially segregated\u201d with just 29 percent of its black population residing outside of Milwaukee and Madison. Even these two cities are highly segregated\u2014the Milwaukee metro area is among the racially segregated in the country. The Wisconsin Republican Party\u2019s legislative coup is happening in a political environment shaped and polarized by these divisions and resentments. Eight years of hyper-partisanship, premised on a belief in the illegitimacy of the opposition, has culminated in a so-far successful<\/em> effort to rob that opposition of its ability to exercise power now that it has claimed the reins of governance.<\/p>\n The broader implications are clear. The nation at large is wracked by a rural and urban divide that encompasses deep divisions along race, culture, and education. Increasingly polarized along partisan identity, those divides have helped produce a Republican Party\u2014led by Donald Trump\u2014that sees its opposition as illegitimate and seeks to restrict its influence on the nation\u2019s politics and governance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Indeed, Scott Walker\u2019s climb to the governor\u2019s mansion, and his eight years in office, are marked by skillful use of rural consciousness, weaponizing resentments against urban liberals and racial minorities. As Cramer puts it, paraphrasing her conversations with voters across the state,<\/p>\n \u201cTo people who perceived that public employee benefits came directly from their own pockets \u2026 Walker\u2019s proposals were a victory for small-town Wisconsinites like themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n But, you know, “if California didn’t exist then Trump would have won the popular vote.” And if Los Angeles and San Fransicso didn’t exist, California would be Republican”. Well, if it weren’t for LA and SF, the state of California would be nothing more than Iowa. “If it weren’t for where most of the people live, the minority would have power”?<\/p>\n How dare they?<\/em> They’re just like the stereotypical uptight asshole parent from the 1960s, rage-filled at the insubordination of their grown offspring because they have their own opinions, or wear mini skirts. Wheels turn, daddy-o. Pendulums swing. And once in awhile, humans become more enlightened. Shhhh, do you hear it? The 100th Monkey is about to have its say.<\/p>\n Large liberal cities should secede from red states. Let the rural folks try to pay for anything then without their main tax base<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What they want to do is tip the scales in the rural\/urban fight. For some reason they idolize \u201crural values\u201d and ignore the fact that cities are literally where culture and education are concentrated. But they don\u2019t idolize culture and education. We idolize down home folksiness or some shit. We cater to people who base their entire worldview on their imaginary friend.<\/p>\n These ideas and tactics are all spewing at lightning speed out of the assholes of various Koch (and other creepy megalomaniac billionaire) think tanks and dirty ops apparatuses. Who else thinks that creepy old men of the Oil Billionaires’ Internationale (the tie that binds the fossil fuel oligarchs of Russia to those of the US, Australia, and ol’ Saudi Arabia) are making an all-in global effort to take down democracy, period, all of it, the whole shootin’ match, mostly just because they can? The whole Newt Gingrich, Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon, religious right, Republican Party, Rupert Murdoch, Mitch McConnell, white supremacist, Gavin McInnes, crazy-ass boiling of the last few decades has been funded and promulgated by these SOBs, the crew that Jane Mayer describes as “dark money,” and we’re in real trouble here, because we’re at the end stage of this strategy, not the beginning. I’m not sure what (if any) weapons the scattered and demoralized forces of democracy have with which to push back, but we’d might as well use anything and everything we can think of, because this shit is serious.<\/p>\n When Ohio (another heavily gerrymandered state with a Republican majority), voters passed an initiative that would make it harder for the legislature to draw gerrymandered districts, the Rs took swift action<\/a> to ensure good Republican governance:<\/p>\n [T]he Republican-controlled Legislature introduced a bill<\/a> that would require 60 percent support from voters to change the state’s constitution, rather than a simple majority. It also states that signatures gathered for a citizen-led initiative are valid for only 180 days\u2014previously, they didn’t expire\u2014and must be submitted by the beginning of April before a November election, instead of July. That would force signature drives to take place during the frigid winter months in Ohio, when it’s toughest for groups to organize.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The gambit failed to pass in the lame-duck session, but the Rethuglicans are vowing to bring it back in the regular session to prevent too much democracy from limiting the God-given right of Republicans to engineer legislative majorities, because democracy is bad for freedom.<\/p>\n In Missouri, where dumb majorities of voters voted for dumb constitutional amendments allowing medical marijuana, raising the minimum wage, repealing a “right to work” law passed by Republicans, limiting the ability to gerrymander, and imposing dumb intrusive “ethics rules” on the legislature, Republicans are smoking mad, and decided to make such amendments a lot harder.<\/a> Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, is all for it, because sometimes people vote wrong and that shouldn’t be allowed:<\/p>\n “Fundamentally, you think when the people vote you shouldn’t be changing that vote,” Parson said. “But the reality of it is that is somewhat what your job is sometimes, if you know something’s unconstitutional, if you know some of it’s not right.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Parson also indicated he would back efforts to restrict the ability to place any new questions on the ballot.<\/p>\n Can anyone remind me how the “forgotten” who voted for Trump were ever actually, you know, forgotten? Cause it seems to me they have been pandered to every fucking minute of every single day for years.<\/p>\n Another supporter of not letting the people interfere too much in their own governance, Dan Meehan, head of the Missouri state Chamber of Commerce and Industry, offered this beautiful doublespeak about making voter initiatives harder:<\/p>\n “We’re not at all denying the ability to do it […] But we just want to make sure we’re approaching it in a proper way.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Like, by building in a permanent Republican majority, which the people really want as long as you talk to the right people. Backers of the Missouri proposals also want to demand “geographic diversity,” because obviously it’s too damn easy to get initiatives on the ballot where a lot of fools might be tempted to vote for ’em:<\/p>\n To put a statutory change on the ballot, petitioners must now gather signatures of 5 percent of registered voters in six of eight congressional districts. To modify the constitution, signatures from 8 percent of voters in six districts is required.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Clearly, they should force petition drives to meet those minimums in all eight congressional districts, because then the process would “be a truly statewide effort,” as Meehan put it. And again, those awful Urbans wouldn’t get to unfairly win simply because they have greater numbers. Besides, big liberal groups have spent money on ad campaigns supporting liberal initiatives, and how is THAT even fair?<\/p>\n Next up on the Republican agenda: Circumventing that pesky Thirteenth Amendment by instituting \u201cInvoluntary Employment<\/i>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n
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