Tuesday, October 21, 2014

At long last, the Republican Party answers my question: yes, they think we’re stupid.

Co-chair of national party, at an event featuring Lt. Gov. Kleefisch, makes embarrassing comment about state voters' collective intelligence

I’ve asked several times on this blog whether Republicans think we’re stupid.

In August, I asked if Scott Walker and state Republicans thought we were dumb for an ad they ran, in which the governor pinned the loss of 133,000 jobs on Jim Doyle rather than the global economic recession that occurred during his tenure:
[The ad] catches the attention of its viewers, but it also causes anyone with a critical mind to question: just how gullible, how stupid does Gov. Scott Walker think the average voter is?
And when he repeated the line days later, I asked again: does Walker really think we’re stupid?
This campaign of lies isn’t just disingenuous -- it’s also relying on the hope that the people of Wisconsin can’t remember the events of the past ten years. Walker is banking on the average voter -- you, me, your Aunt Irene, and so forth -- of having the memory span of a goldfish in order to win a second term.
In June, I asked if state Republicans thought Wisconsin women were dumb based on the passage of an abortion bill that required, in many cases, transvaginal ultrasounds in order to give those seeking an abortion “a full understanding” of what the procedure entailed:
The law -- as it stands currently, before this atrocious bill was even proposed -- requires [women] to be told what happens, and encourages them to seek other options.

It’s not too extreme to assume that Wisconsin Republicans think that women are dumb. If Republicans can’t trust women to make an informed choice after being counseled, waiting 24 hours, being offered an ultrasound, and generally being hounded by the issue, then it’s no wonder why Mary Lazich and her colleagues think women need more information in the form of an invasive ultrasound.
And again in February, I asked if WISGOP thought we were all dummies for not agreeing with them that the loss of 133,000 jobs during the recession was all Mary Burke’s fault:
Do the Republicans of this state, and moreover the national Republican Governors Association, think we can’t piece together recent history to understand that these losses can’t be blamed on Burke, for not just one but two reasons (the recession, and her being out of office at the time)?
After several months of silence, I figured that my facetious attempts to get the Republican Party to fess up were all ignored. Then, the co-chair of the national Republican Party, in a campaign event alongside Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, made it clear: yes, Virginia Wisconsin, they do think we’re stupid.
Sharon Day, the co-chair, told the audience, “It’s not going to be an easy election, it’s a close election. Like I said, much closer than I can even understand why.

“I don’t want to say anything about your Wisconsin voters but, some of them might not be as sharp as a knife.”
Emphasis in bold added.

I honestly didn’t expect a truthful answer from someone so high up in the party. But there it is, out in the open. And more importantly, the second half of the ticket, Lt. Gov. Kleefisch, didn’t dispute those words at that event.

They truly think we’re stupid.

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