My blogging friend Elliot has asked to be convinced that Jim Burkee "isn't full of crap" and why he should vote for him over Sensenbrenner tomorrow:
I’ve got to admit, I always thought Burkee was a stealth liberal ever since he pulled the truly stupid stunt of "co-running" with a Democrat for Sensenbrenner's seat last year.
Plus, both the Shepherd Express and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have endorsed him. (And my rule is normally to vote against anyone either of those papers endorse, let alone BOTH of them.)
To be honest, I'm very surprised that Elliot calls "co-running" with a Democrat as being a stupid stunt that makes him a stealth liberal (or was Walz a stealth conservative?). I always got the sense that Elliot disliked the hyper partisan nature that politics has taken most recently. It seems that that Republicans will reflexively say that anything a Democrat says is bad/wrong/evil and vice versa. You need to look no further than the recent political commentary on Sarah Palin for evidence.
But let's look at the reality of the district Burkee is running in. James Sensenbrenner is the Herb Kohl, or the Ted Kennedy, of the 5th District. What I mean by that is that he usually doesn't have to do anything to get re-elected. He probably pays for some fresh yard signs every two years, but he doesn't have to run ads or do anything else. Despite that, Sensenbrenner gets a lot of campaign money from some major corporate interests that he has helped while he was the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
I've gone back and forth in my own mind on campaign financing, and corporate and PAC money in politics. Part of me says that people ought to have the freedom and ability to donate as much money as they choose to a politician. Part of me also says that corporations aren't people, and when they donate to campaigns, all that results is larger government, corporate welfare and rent seeking, all the things that as a free market Libertarian I can't stand. Burkee and Walz shared that philosophy, and so while they disagreed on the exact methods that needed to be enacted by government, they both agreed that private funding was crucial, and so they agreed to run that part of their campaign together. In the end, Walz dropped out, which works out best for Republicans. Republicans now have the choice to keep their party's representation in the House, but can do so with someone who actually holds true to small government, federalist principles that they claim to love.
Sensenbrenner believes in none of those things. He voted for Medicare Part D, one of the largest government entitlements to be passed in memory. He's still proud of that bill. While claiming to hate unfunded federal mandates on states (like NCLB), he authored, and bullied through Real ID, which enforces an unfunded mandate on states to change their driver's licenses, share their databases (which will cost billions), and threaten our privacy and makes us less secure from identity theft. And he did it all by attaching Real ID as a rider to a must pass Iraq War spending bill. Attaching riders to those types of bills is another thing that he is supposedly against. Jim Sensenbrenner also voted in favor of ethanol mandates. He has since come out against them, but frankly, why should he be believed at this point? I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.
Sensenbrenner has been in the House for 30 years. He's played the game. He votes one way, then promises not to do it again. Are we really like battered wives who will take back their husband after being hit, just because he promises never to do it again? The design of the House was meant to have high turnover. That's why the entire House of Representatives runs for re-election every two years. Why do we refuse to take advantage of this?
Let's travel back 2 years to when the Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives. There was an awful lot of soul searching that occurred about Republicans, trying to determine what happened. The overall conclusion was that the Republican Party had "lost it's way". They were no longer the party of small government and fiscal conservatism. They didn't push the ideals of Federalism any more. Supposedly, this was going to cause a re-examination by the party to it's core values, and that during the primaries, new candidates would be vetted that believed in these things. Well, look at the result in this case. The GOP organizations in the 5th District have all but given Burkee the finger, while Sensenbrenner would only debate him once, and during that debate, talked about how challenging Republicans made Burkee a bad Republican. So much for going back to core beliefs and soul searching. Two years later and that makes you a bad Republican. You'd think they would want to encourage that now more than ever, since there is no Democratic challenger. Whoever wins the primary will win the election. Now is the best time for soul searching.
Yes, the Journal and the Shepherd Express both sided with Burkee, but I think that is more about getting rid of Sensenbrenner, than identifying Burkee as a liberal wolf in sheep's clothing. Fellow blogger Josh Schroeder dispels that idea very well as well. And truth be told, I'm probably voting for Burkee more as a vote against Sensenbrenner myself. I'd personally like to give a chance to someone new who is espousing real conservative ideals, than a Johnny come lately who is promising something now, that he's hasn't been able to deliver on for 30 years. One has no real track record, while the other has failed the test. I'd like to give a chance to pass the test to someone who hasn't had it yet.
