Green orbits Planet Madison

Rep. Mark Green teed off on Wisconsin's capital city last week, calling it Planet Madison and ridiculing its political culture. It was one of those cheap shots a politician takes in front of a friendly audience, and Green thought the Badger Herald, the conservative paper on the UW campus, was safe, apparently.

But his comment got a lot more attention than he bargained for.

It didn't sit too well with Mayor Dave (on Planet Madison, everybody knows your name), who fired off a letter to Green:

I noted your comments as reported yesterday morning in The Badger Herald regarding ‘Planet Madison.’Insulting the 225,000 residents of Wisconsin’s second-largest city is a novel electoral strategy in your run for governor. Good luck with that approach.

Green, the mayor said, comes from Planet Washington, where he hangs out with inhabitants like indicted Republican Congressmen Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham.

Now, in a Badger Herald opinion piece,Rob Rossmeissl asks: Is it possible to make people believe you take them seriously after you publicly label them lunatics?

There are a lot of voters on Planet Madison, and they're not all liberal loons. Green's line may play well outstate, but it'll cost him in Madison. A bad miscalculation. Let's see if Scott Walker can take advantage of it.