Time for An Eddie Mahe Retreat

Free Will is happy to welcome Charlie Sykes to the choir. As Republican critic (first chair), it has been a slow slog filling the chairs of my choir. Incrementally though, the chairs are being taken by those of us who remember why we vote Republican, why we labor for Republicans, and what we expect from Republican majorities.

SIDE BAR: It has nothing to do with the knuckle-draggin’ policy work of St. Senator Tom Reynolds -- Say What? DOH!

In Washington, DC and in Madison, WI, Republicans are morphing into what Democrats were (are) before losing their majorities, an Incumbent Party.

WHERE DO REPUBLICANS STAND?
By Charles Sykes

As Republicans who control the state legislature return to work this week, they face a nagging question: Exactly what do you stand for?

Lower taxes? The GOP leadership rejected proposals for a gas tax holiday that would have suspended the state’s 29.9 cent per gallon levy to provide consumers some relief from the summer’s soaring prices.

The free market? Republicans have so far been unwilling to repeal or change the state’s minimum markup law, which requires wholesalers and retailers to jack up prices by 9 percent.

Smaller government? Competition? Consumer choice? Key Republicans continue to back a proposal to mandate the use of the ethanol in gasoline statewide despite evidence that it would cost more, give drivers worse gas mileage, continue to wreak havoc with small engines, and actually make the air dirtier.

Each issue has a common theme: Republican leaders are not only siding with well-heeled special interests against taxpayers and consumers, but are also abandoning fundamental principles.

Tax cuts are the party’s bread and butter, but the party leadership turned its back on tax cuts because they didn’t want to anger the powerful road building lobby.. In the face of road-builder opposition, only 12 legislators signed onto a letter calling for a special session of the legislature to consider the temporary tax cut.

Similarly, key Republicans continue to back legally mandated price gouging because they are beholden to the petroleum marketing industry, which insists the Depression-era rules are needed to protect mom-and-pop gas stations against a predatory Wal-Mart. (Even though most mom-and-pops have long since disappeared and Wal-Mart does not have nearly enough stores to compete with thousands of existing gas stations.)

And finally, after years of railing against heavy-handed regulations from the EPA and the DNR, Republicans (and Governor Doyle) seem intent on caving into the demands of the ethanol industry to force consumers to buy ethanol-laden gasoline. In a free market, consumers choose and businesses compete, but such is the clout that the corn farmers and the ethanol manufacturers enjoy, that Wisconsin may use the force of government to override the market.

Talk about being off message.

Legislative leaders may yet turn this all around, but the signs aren’t propitious. Amid the lobbyist riot that is Wisconsin state government too many legislators are drawn to the special-interest honey pots and it has simply become too easy to forget why they came there in the first place.

Republicans could rally around a Taxpayer Bill of Rights, but in the absence of organized special interests like the road builders, the gas marketers, or the ethanol lobby, Republicans seem strangely unmotivated.

Meanwhile, their leadership is adrift and distracted. Dale Schultz was elected senate majority leader precisely because he was so ineffective; while Assembly Speaker John Gard is off running for Congress.

With nobody in charge, it’s been left to the special interests to tell Republicans what they stand for. If anything.