Gard not "Republican" enough?

 

This is one of those items that seems like satire but turns out to be true.

Assembly Speaker John Gard -- the guy I call SpongeJohn GardPants for his gay-bashing, is under fire from radio wingnut Mark Belling, who claims he has somehow sold out and moderated his positions since deciding to run for Congress.

Belling writes:

Gard has been co-opted. The John Gard I used to know sneered at tired GOP sellouts like Dale Schultz and Mike Ellis (another Senate Republican moderate). But the Gard of 2005 has become what he used to detest. The combination of his personal political motivations and his frustration over being outmaneuvered by Doyle has rendered him useless to his Republican Assembly members. If he doesn’t know enough to quit, they need to replace him.

So Gard, who has been driving the guns,God and gays agenda in the legislature, is now not right-wing enough?

Even more interesting is this Belling analysis:

The Gard and Schultz malaise problem is part of a larger one for Wisconsin Republicans. Their voting base is a lot more conservative than they are. Wisconsin Republican voters want tax relief, real election reforms, major cuts in spending at the bloated University of Wisconsin System and an overall reduction in the state budget. Their elected assemblymen and senators, way too inculcated in the Madison culture, prefer to maintain the state’s status quo. This abandonment of their own base has made the sellout Republicans very vulnerable to challenge within their own party.

Whenever a conservative takes on a moderate in a Republican primary, the conservative challenger wins. In 2002, incumbent Republican Sen. Peggy Rosenzweig was thrashed in a GOP primary in her Wauwatosa-area district by right-winger Tom Reynolds. Last year, Senate Republican leader Mary Panzer, a moderate, lost by a whopping 4-to-1 margin to the far more conservative Glenn Grothman. In 2006, Menomonee Falls state Rep. Suzanne Jeskewitz will be opposed by Chris Slinker, a former legislative aide and Menomonee Falls trustee.

Jeskewitz is part of the cabal that has run Menomonee Falls (badly) for years. In the state Assembly GOP caucus, she has consistently fought against tax freezes and spending limits. She has been silent on issues like Milwaukee-area vote fraud and overcompensation of state school teachers. If Slinker, a conservative, raises all of these issues against the more moderate Jeskewitz, she’ll go down in the same flames that engulfed Rosenzweig and Panzer.

That analysis only holds up in districts which are safely Republican -- where winning the GOP primary is a guarantee you will win the election.

In fact, the Republican agenda in the legislature -- especially in the Assembly, where Gard is the Speaker -- has been far to the right of the electorate, even on a common sense issue like the minimum wage, let alone abortion, stem cell research, and other issues where the leadership has staked out an extreme position.

A Republican from a competitive district who backs the wingnut agenda could be in trouble come election time.

If Gard is moderating his views -- and I have seen little evidence to support that --it is because the Congressional district he wants to represent, while leaning Republican, is not a lock for the GOP nominee. The 8th CD is not as Republican as the Assembly district Gard represents.

As much as we complain about it, Democrats should welcome the Republican move to the extreme right. The farther they move in that direction, the more likely it is that the voters will respond by electing Democrats.

Belling's column.