Through the Looking Glass

I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but somehow I ended up on the email distribution list of Bob Dohnal, publisher of what may be the most awkwardly-formated website (well, not counting Time Cube anyway), the Wisconsin Conservative Digest.

It's kind of fun, actually.

For example, all the kewl kids are talking about the Digest's "survey" this week, but I got the email touting it more than a week ago. I just thought the thing was so laughable it didn't need to be talked about. For example:

The questions were about current events and Conservative leaders. We wanted to find out how the people felt about these issues that are not fairly addressed in the mainstream media.

1. Should we immediately withdraw from Iraq?
There have been several referendums on this issue plus the President is supposed to be wildly unpopular on this issue so that I expected pretty much of a split on this question. I was wrong--95 percent of the respondents wanted us to stay the course. [. . .]

6. Rate Jim Sensenbrenner, poor, good or excellent.
Since Sensenbrenner has been involved in many contentious issues the last year, I thought he might get some bad marks from people in this area, but only four percent gave him a poor while 83 percent gave him an excellent.

This is the sort of thing that should make waves, right? I mean, dozens of bring-the-troops-home referenda passed last spring, yet 95% of the people polled here want us to stay the course?

The humor, of course, is provided by the juxtaposition of the seriousness with which Dohnal treats the results and the demographics of the survey itself: "Surveys were sent out," Dohnal writes, "to GOP leaders, members of the Heritage Foundation, subscribers to Human Events and other miscellaneous leaders throughout the state." So there you go--straight opinion on all the issues that don't get fair treatment in the mainstream media, as viewed by those outside the mainstream--who in some ways pride themselves on being outside of the mainstream.

We're through the looking glass, people.

But I'm not done; merely laughing at the thing is not enough. There are also issues raised here that need addressing, some seriously. For one, Dohnal flat-out lies in his commentary to this question:

5. The SAGE program is a program that lowers class sizes in low income areas. The question was, whether or not we should put more money into SAGE so that we can enlarge the CHOICE program in low income areas?
The teachers union has been successful in telling everyone that lower class sizes means better results, even though testing does not bring that out. Support for SAGE received a positive vote of 35 percent--65 percent were opposed to putting more money into SAGE.

Dohnal's assertion that the teachers union is lying to you is itself patently false. As this Department of Education summary indicates, the results of low class sizes are real and documented. Even here in Wisconsin, a team of non-partisan researchers reported (.doc) that there is a real and lasting advantage to SAGE classrooms.

More importantly, Dohnal spends the most ink (pixels) on State Senator Tom Reynolds. Dohnal is a consultant on Reynolds' campaign, and he can't believe anyone would dis his boss. Reynolds gets prominent placement all over the Digest, and Dohnal plugs the man all up and down the page. Here's the question from the "survey":

7. Rate Sen. Tom Reynolds, poor, good or excellent.
The same with Sen. Tom Reynolds. He has been heavily attacked by both the special interest for his votes against the automatic tax on gas, the ethanol mandate and the minimum markup laws amongst others. Spivak and Bice, the left wing loonies from the Milwaukee Journal have strongly made vicious, personal smears against Reynolds and his family, mainly because Dan Bice is strongly opposed to any Christians that are also conservative. We figured that this would show up in Reynolds' results. They didn't seem to have any effect as Reynolds only got a five percent poor rating while receiving a 70 percent excellent. Remember, some people will never rate other politicians as excellent, reserving those only for the Ronald Reagans of this world. It is obvious that no one would beat Reynolds in a primary as the Conservatives are strongly behind him.

Nothing like trying to make the silk purse. My question: At what point does Dohnal's use of his media outlet to promote his employer start to become an issue?

And, perhaps more snarkily, if wingnut Tom Reynolds can only gather 70% in a wingnut survey, how much trouble is Tom Reynolds in? And this is as good a time as any to remind you of Reynolds's opponent (who is not my employer), Jim Sullivan. You can contribute there or through my ActBlue page.

***

The kewl kids, by the way, who beat me to the party:

• Xoff was first, wondering, if the Spice Boys are left-wing loonies, what that might make him.
  
  
• Paul Soglin uses Dohnal's orbit to reassure himself: "Occasionally," he writes, "we may be confused on the left, but we have not lost our equilibrium or our sense of direction."
  
  
• One Wisconsin Now's Jon Kraus conducted his own survey:

  One Wisconsin Now would like to announce that based on our own survey of
  “Wisconsin residents”, 100% of people we polled believe that the Wisconsin Conservative Digest survey is very out of touch with reality. Never mind that in this case we define Wisconsin residents as One Wisconsin Now’s 5 person staff, the margin of error is 0%.

All of that humor pales in comparison, of course, to Bob Dohnal's closing:

In the case of the democrats [sic], they have the nutty fringe that want to preserve every tree, eliminate God from the world, and are Socialists. It's hard to keep them happy, so they might run over to the Greens and vote. In the case of the Republicans, you have to energize the "hook and bullet" guys who drive pickups and SUVs, plus your "Right to Life" groups. The candidates who talk about the things that really matter to the voters will get them out and win. Those issues are basically the ones that affect their homes and families, their jobs, their autos, and their hobbies. If you get caught out in the Netherlands talking about the gold standard, and other esoteric problems you will go home empty handed.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go save some trees.

UPDATE: Ben at Badger Blues uses Dohnal as a jumping-off point for a longer, more thoughtful post.

Wednesday Quotes

Drum: Your income ought to be about $4,000 higher than it is, but instead of getting that income you get bought off with a $200 tax cut from the Republican Party. Meanwhile, the lucky duckies at the top get a 100% pay increase and a 30% tax cut. It's a good time to be super-rich in America.

Neiwert: Because these potential abuses exist, a sense of ethics is obligatory for anyone who possesses this power. It's why the Society of Professional Journalists has a Code of Ethics that abjures such behavior.

Ed Thompson: Ed Thompson says the No. 1 issue in Wisconsin this year is defeating a Republican-backed constitutional amendment that would emphatically ban same-sex marriage and similar civil unions. [. . .] The GOP-run Legislature is attempting to "pass laws of prejudice against people," Thompson told convention-goers. "If you can accept that, you're not a Libertarian. You're not even an American. You're a bigot."

Grumps: The CIA is paying people to read blogs and then believing what they read because, you know, if it's on the Internet it has to be true. Then they pass it on to our President in his daily briefing reports. GW doesn't believe what he reads in the papers so he ignores it, then gets his news from blog digests. Think about how often Spivak and Bice get it right and then be very afraid.

Pocan: Hey GOPpers, I have a suggestion for a version of TABOR for you. How bout you just close the state coffers to every special interest that winks at you and limit spending in the next budget? Or is that hard to do in an election year?

Lynch: Yesterday the governor had to veto yet another Republican attack on the SAGE program to reduce class sizes. The legislature actually passed a bill that would let schools take funding to reduce class sizes and then not reduce class sizes.

The Doyle "Blink": As Phony as the Cap "Crisis"

There's that old saw about two similar items being a coincidence, and three being a trend, you know? And so when news hit this past week of a potential deal to raise the cap on vouchers in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, I started seeing a trend in the right half of the Cheddarsphere: Doyle blinked! (Sometimes, Doyle caved!) Examples:

• Chip: Jim Doyle “blinked” in the standoff because the Democratic base in Milwaukee was starting to sweat this, big time.
  
• Fraley: Doyle blinks a lot.
  
• Esenberg: Doyle gets out of the school house door? Did Doyle cave on school choice?
  
• Patrick: Anything that pisses off the teachers unions is a good thing. The fact is Doyle caved.
  
• Binversie (at Owen's place): Read the Deal. Doyle got creamed.
  
• DiGaudio: DIAMOND JIM GETS OUT OF THE SCHOOHOUSE DOOR. Looks like there is a deal to increase the cap (not remove it) on Choice enrollment. Diamond Jim blinked and Milwaukee schoolchildren won.

To be fair, not all on the right like the deal (mostly because of the $25 million promised for SAGE funding), and not all are happy with John Gard's hand in making it happen. But those saying that Doyle "blinked" (or worse), like the ones above and the ones I probably just haven't seen yet, are lying. While I do not support this compromise, I can at least look at it objectively and see that Doyle is in no way the one who caved most to make this happen. Consider:

• For almost two solid years before last week, Doyle had been offering to raise the cap in exchange for things like more funding for MPS, or greater accountability in the choice schools. Though he personally opposes the program, he has always been willing to accommodate the needs of Milwaukee parents, students, and taxpayers. For those same two years, John Gard never once offered to sit at the table to work out a deal. Blinker? Gard.
  
  
• Doyle's November proposal to raise the cap included all of the following, which have either been signed into law already or have been promised by legislative leaders: An increase in SAGE funding; an increase in the enrollment cap in Racine's charter school program; accreditation for all voucher schools; required standardized testing in all voucher schools; changes to eligibility requirements to make it easier for families to stay in the program. Blinker? Gard.
  
  
• Doyle has always wanted to keep the enrollment cap limited, offering at first 18% and then 20% of MPS enrollment. The deal ends up at about 25%. Gard has always wanted--sent the bill to Doyle several times for a veto, in fact--100%, or, effectively, no cap at all. Blinker? Gard.
  
  
• Doyle wanted a "hold Milwaukee harmless" provision that would ease some of the extra bite felt by Milwaukee taxpayers due to the vouchers. He didn't get that one.

So how is it that the right Cheddarsphere can lie about Doyle's blinking like this? It's easy, actually: The right has spent the last couple of years creating a "crisis," and then, ever since the cap hit, they have been lying about Jim Doyle's role in that "crisis." By internalizing the previous lies--that Doyle wanted to "kill choice" and was "standing in the schoolhouse door"--they can now believe the lie that it was Doyle who "blinked."

The truth is that Republicans, in concert with their backers at pro-voucher organizations like School Choice Wisconsin, manufactured a "crisis." Gard's refusal to compromise with Doyle, plus SCW's rejection of DPI's plans to protect existing schools and current students, combined to make this issue, as one conservative commenter noted, "a very powerful campaign weapon." So they capitalized on it: In ad after ad, MMAC, ACE, and others blamed Doyle for creating the mess that might have kicked 4000 students out of their choice schools, rather than the real culprits. Bloggers repeated the lie ad nauseum that it was Doyle's fault that these families would suffer, that Doyle was opposed to raising the cap (never mind that he had produced written offers to do so). They even ran photoshopped pictures of Jim Doyle's head on the body of an anti-desegregationist governor blocking the literal schoolhouse door. These were all lies.

But they repeated the lies, and refused to listen to those of us on the left who pointed out that they had their facts completely wrong. It was a little bit like arguing against truthiness--the facts may change, as Colbert says, but their opinion doesn't.

This set them up perfectly for the phony "blink": If they believe, in error, that Doyle would never agree to raise the cap and, in fact, was trying to kill it (Doyle, being a "wholly owned subsidiary of WEAC," must want to kill it, right?), saw the deal as a cave on his part. Since they did not believe that Doyle had ever offered to compromise on the issue before (when, really, that was Gard), they saw Doyle as the one who flip-flopped.

And this is reflective, I think, of the way the right often works: Spread enough seed lies, and then you can reap them when needed. For example, when I say "Howard Dean," what's the first thing that comes to mind? If you said "wacky liberal," you might just be a conservative. In reality, Dean was to the right of almost all the other 2004 primary candidates, but his opposition to the Iraq War drove the narrative. Now whenever Dean makes a salient point of any kind, the right trots out the "wacky liberal" label and ignores him. (Or, sandwiched in between posts about how incivil the left is, posts more photoshopping.)

The same happened here. It's something Republicans do well (we Democrats don't like to lie), and if Howard Fuller and Brother Bob and a few others who actually think about children instead of campaigning hadn't dragged Gard to the table, they would have completely gotten away with it.