Is Brett Hulsey a Republican plant?

It’s really the only explanation. Seriously, Democrats had the Mona Lisa of political gaffes handed to them a couple of weeks ago when a few GOP lunatics from parts of the state whose chief exports are braised squirrel heads and befuddled gay teenagers decided it would be a good idea for the state Republican Party to affirm Wisconsin’s right to secede from the Union.

Then Brett Hulsey comes along, beholds this masterpiece of puerile self-immolation, and proceeds to hurl a fusillade of poo at it like a deranged Vilas Zoo ape.

Now, it’s hard to understate the grandiosity of the GOP’s altruism toward state Democrats. In the very cradle of the Republican Party, whose first presidential candidate was none other than Abraham Lincoln (who, if you’ll recall, spilled untold blood and treasure to preserve the Union and emancipate its slaves), a coterie of Republican whackjobs somehow wielded enough influence to force a vote at the Wisconsin GOP convention on the state’s right to secede, presumably because they weren’t happy about the nation’s first black president forcing affordable health care on its citizens. And Kenya. Mustn’t forget Kenya.

Mwah! C’est magnifique! That’s a piece of outré performance art that would have made Andy Kaufman proud.

Apparently feeling left out, state Rep. Hulsey (D-Keebler Elf Village on Top of a Butterscotch Toadstool in the Enchanted Forest of Flying Munchkins and Hippopotamus Dreams) decided it would be a good idea to threaten to hand out KKK hoods at last weekend’s state Republican convention to protest the GOP’s racist policies. He even tweeted out a photo of one of the hoods, along with the message “Check out the WI GOP party hates [sic] I’ll hand out to highlight @GovWalker, WIGOP’s racist policies like racial profiling.” He didn’t go through with it, but the damage was done, and over the weekend he became a national laughingstock.

Hulsey, who recently announced his intention to run for governor of the Badger State (and, BTW, I’m now convinced that the good citizens of Hulsey’s version of the Badger State are literally badgers), responded to criticism from all sides by saying, “They’re the ones that are voting to secede on Saturday, not me.”

Ugh.

First of all, they weren’t voting to secede, they were voting to uphold the right to secede, which, while monumentally stupid, is an entirely different animal. Secondly, the suggestion that Scott Walker is even remotely like a Klansman is beyond the pale. I don’t like Walker, but this really goes too far. And third, oh my God, you’ve got me defending Scott Walker! You ass!

So I have to wonder: Is Hulsey a sort of reverse Manchurian candidate for the GOP? Was he programmed to blow up in the Democrats’ faces just when the Republican Party needed him the most?

So far, Mary Burke has run a less-than-stellar campaign, but she needs a grinning, pantaloons-wearing clown chasing her around the campaign trail on his giant wobbly-wheeled tricycle like she needs another disingenuous Scott Walker op-ed …

Speaking of …

Apparently Scott Walker doesn’t read my blog, wherein I’ve explained to him time and time again that Wisconsin’s economic recovery has very little to do with him and a lot to do with the recovering national economy, which nosedived under the free-market-loving patriot George W. Bush and has slowly but surely stabilized under the Kenyan Marxist usurper Barack Obama.

In a recent op-ed for the Wisconsin State Journal, Walker offered up this steaming heap of offal:

Remember four years ago in Wisconsin? It had gotten pretty bad.

More than 130,000 jobs were lost during Gov. Jim Doyle’s last term.

Thanks for using short words, governor. We get it.

(Continued)

Of course, every state in the union is better off than it was four years ago, when the country was still dealing with Bush’s giant Chernobyl fart of an economic record. Gov. Doyle was a burn victim, not a destroyer of dreams.

Unfortunately, we still lag behind most of the nation in job creation, and our neighbor to the west, whose governor is an unapologetic lefty, is still trouncing us when it comes to economic growth. Luckily, those woeful lutefisk lovers still cheer for the same sad-sack NFL team, or the shame would be unbearable.

More good news for Obamacare

I include this item only to raise the blood pressure, and corrode the good health, of Republicans, whose full-court press against Obamacare these past several months threatened to do the same to thousands of vulnerable uninsured Americans.

The AP reported on Friday that a surge of Obamacare sign-ups in Wisconsin in the final seven weeks of the enrollment period raised the total number of state enrollees to nearly 140,000. The AP noted that nearly as many people signed up during that period as during the first six months. It was the kind of late surge that many Obamacare proponents had predicted.

Per the Associated Press:

Blue or red, a majority of states have exceeded their health care sign-up targets under President Barack Obama’s law — something that would have been hard to imagine after last fall’s botched rollout of insurance markets.

…

[S]trong state-by-state performance indicates that the health care law is making inroads around the country, even as Republicans insist repealing “Obamacare” will be a winning issue in the fall congressional elections.

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