This is what playing politics looks like

The outrage fatigue is hitting again, just as I was starting to get over it, as now it looks the Wisconsin state legislature will be coming back for a special session on the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights (TABOR) and the tax freeze bill next week.

The session was called by Senate Majority Leader Mary Panzer, in a flip-flop of monumental proportions. Earlier this summer she did the right thing, a rarity among Republicans these days, especially here in Wisconsin. She realized that there was no chance of there being agreement on any kind of TABOR language (and uncertainty about a tax-freeze majority that can withstand the governor's veto), and declared that there would be no vote, no special session. In fact, as of Friday when she called the session, there was no draft of a TABOR amendment available at all.

But now, under pressure from the wingnut wing of the party--and a serious primary challenge from Glenn Grothman, who is challenging the very conservative Panzer from the right!--she has changed her mind.

They're facing an August 3 deadline for the amendment part of the agenda; if they get it passed by then (it needs a 2/3 vote, which I doubt they have), they can vote again in January and have it on the ballot for a referendum in April. That's their plan for the anti-gay marriage amendment passed last March. If they can't get it done now, the referendum will be pushed back to 2007 at the earliest.

Trouble is, in the next couple of days, they have to whip up language that the Republicans can agree on--no simple task--schedule, announce, and hold public hearings, plus have the vote. Many Democratic lawmakers will be in Boston next week for the Democratic National Convention. (Republicans in Texas have tried the same special-session crap to keep Texas Dems from convention going.)

Even other Republicans can see that this is bull. I like what Mike Ellis had to say:

"It's total politics," Doyle said at a campaign rally in Milwaukee. "Nobody even knows what the proposal is. Just a couple of weeks ago, even Mary Panzer was saying this needed thorough discussion and thought. Obviously, whatever is going on in the Republican Party these days, they're in a lot of political turmoil." [. . .]

Republican Sen. Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) also criticized his party's leaders for their new emphasis on trying to recast the constitution. "Oh my God, they're panicking," Ellis said Friday.

"Furthering somebody's political ambitions or extending somebody's political career ought not be the dictum by which the public policy is formulated," Ellis said, referring to Panzer's challenge by Grothman.

What's really cheneyed-up is the tax-freeze business, if it passes. This late, everyone everywhere has already set their budgets based on the numbers they thought they had. School districts, for example, are all way past the date that they can do any layoffs of unionized workers; they'd have to start the year with no secretaries or something. Maybe end school early, around spring break. The assessment on my house has already been done--up $9000 over last year, thank you very much--so I don't know how the city'll get by. Cripes.

I'll be interested to hear what my arch-nemesis Owen has to say about this. For more on why both TABOR and the tax freeze are bad ideas, check my old posts here, here, here, here, here, and here.