Walker can thank Obama for good news in governor’s ad

Gov. Walker has been bombarding his loyal subjects with a new strain of brain virus in the past week. It comes in the form of an ad so disingenuous it would make Karl Rove napalm his knickers.

If you want to see it, you can go to ScottWalker.com. (I’m gracious enough to link to the Walker campaign’s website, so what do you think the chances are he’ll have the common courtesy to link back to me? I’m guessing about the same as Pope Francis retweeting a Kim Kardashian upskirt pic.)

Here are my favorite excerpts from the ad:

“It had gotten pretty bad four years ago. Over 130,000 jobs lost.”

Oh, thank you, thank you, Scott Walker, for leading us out of that gaping economic crater we found ourselves in thanks to the brilliant economic stewardship of our last Republican president. Say, maybe you can become our next Republican president and bring us full circle.

Of course, it would be easy enough to miss the economic big picture if you thought Wisconsin was an independent fiefdom that had no legitimate connection to the federal government or the national economy. In other words, if you were a state Republican. (More on that later.)

But if you have a memory longer than a stoned ferret’s, you know that the state economy was crashing not because former Gov. Jim Doyle had utterly failed to rein in the worst impulses of Wall Street, but because the nation’s economy was creating jobs like George W. Bush paints.

So now that the national economy is on surer footing, Wisconsin’s economy is performing better. That’s hardly remarkable. What is remarkable — or at least notable — is that Scott Walker’s Wisconsin continues to underperform relative to the rest of the nation. Our rate of private-sector job creation still lags the nation’s — clocking in at 35th at last count. (By the way, when the dastardly Jim Doyle left office, we were ranked 11th.)

This is no doubt at least partly due to Walker’s reckless decision to turn down federal funds as part of a Medicaid expansion under Obamacare — a decision that prevented our own federal tax money from boosting our economic prospects.

Speaking of Obamacare, Walker’s ad really gets cute when it gets around to the subject of health care:

“Kids are going to college. Families are planning vacations and more are going to sleep knowing they have access to health care.”

Yeah, uh — no thanks to you, Scott.

Gallup recently released a poll that revealed the national uninsured rate has dropped to its lowest level since 2009. Why? Remember that thing every Republican in the country said was the worst assault on our freedoms since taxation without representation, institutionalized slavery, gays and atheists having the same rights as everyone else, and New Coke? You know, Obamacare?

(Continued)

Yeah, that Obamacare. The same one Scott Walker has tried to garrote at every turn— when he wasn’t encouraging state residents to enroll, that is.

Interestingly enough, Gallup also found that the uninsured rate dropped three times faster in states that embraced Obamacare than in states — like Walker’s Wisconsin — that rejected Medicaid expansion and/or refused to set up their own exchanges.

Of course, politics is politics, and politicians use whatever ammunition they can, but crediting Scott Walker with an increase in the rate of the insured is beyond ironic. It’s appallingly cynical.

More Tea Party paranoia

You’ve no doubt read about the Republican regional caucus that recently passed a resolution reaffirming the state of Wisconsin’s right to secede from the union. The party’s Resolutions Committee voted in favor of the measure, which “supports legislation that upholds Wisconsin’s right, under extreme circumstances, to secede.” The resolution awaits final approval at the Republican Party Convention May 2-4.

So this is much ado about nothing, really. We’re not going to secede, and the state Republican Party isn’t going to propose that we do.

So what is this, then? It seems like another way for fringe Republican officials to telegraph to frightened north woods conservatives who haven’t had cable long enough to catch on to the fact that Fox News is a comedy channel that they’re with them 100% — until the black helicopter people come to spear all their walleyes, turn their Walmart Superstores into techno gay clubs, and force comprehensive health care on their children.

It’s also a way to reaffirm their right to embarrass themselves. And to let people know that the president who bailed out Wall Street, presided over a more than 100% increase in the Dow, and put profit-making insurance companies at the center of his health care reform plan is a secret America-hating Marxist.

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