Hon­estly, I’m wait­ing to hear where the usual sus­pects regard­ing abor­tion rights and other “choice” advo­cates on this news when it gets more exposure.

Wis­con­sin employ­ers, includ­ing hos­pi­tals and nurs­ing homes, could no longer require work­ers to get flu shots under a bill pend­ing in the Legislature.

Repub­li­can Rep. Jeremy Thies­feldt, of Fond du Lac, says he began draft­ing the leg­is­la­tion after sev­eral hos­pi­tal work­ers and health care con­trac­tors in his dis­trict com­plained they were fired after refus­ing to be vaccinated.

The bill would require employ­ers to pro­vide infor­ma­tion about the risks and ben­e­fits of vac­ci­na­tion and allow employ­ees rea­son­able time to con­sider it. They could not demote, sus­pend, dis­charge or dis­crim­i­nate against employ­ees who refuse.

If passed, the bill would make Wis­con­sin the only state that bars employ­ers of any type from requir­ing vaccinations.

Some­thing tells that chal­leng­ing the lib­eral mind­set on “choice” wasn’t Rep. Thiesfeldt’s intent here.  I have two sis­ters and two sister-in-laws who work in health care to some extent and am fairly sure not all of them are thrilled with the side effects of get­ting their annual manda­tory flu shots.  One or two of them have got­ten the flu from their shots, not the patients they treat, and feel they would have been at work if not for it.

Frankly, they shouldn’t have to worry about get­ting ter­mi­nated for not get­ting a shot if they are prone to cer­tain side effects of the shot.

Under­stand­ably so, health care offi­cials are wor­ried about this law will put the pub­lic at risk since health care work­ers are the most likely to come in con­tact over and over again with those who have the flu.  I believe a com­pro­mise option is pos­si­ble, per­haps allow­ing for those who decide not to get the shot to sign a legal waver hold­ing them respon­si­ble for tak­ing a series of added pre­cau­tions to avoid the spread of disease.

Over­all, how­ever, I agree with the intent of the bill.  Peo­ple should not be fired for declin­ing to get a flu shot.

(H/T Twitchy)

The staff of Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison) is not hav­ing the best day today. First, they clearly either didn’t prep their boss on the events / time­line of Beng­hazi (or did it inten­tion­ally, you decide) and then they got caught being mocked for prepar­ing what has to quite pos­si­bly the sin­gle worst visual aid ever to hit the House floor.

Per­haps the most hilar­i­ous part of the thread of tweets related to this pic­ture via Twit­ter is the reac­tion from for­mer Bald­win and Kind staffer Meghan Roh, who now works for Wash­ing­ton State Sen. Maria Cantwell.  If that’s “sav­ing the tax­pay­ers money,” I’d hate to know what lazy looks like.

I’ll be blunt.  I’m no fan of the Cap Times’ John Nichols.

Being part of the 2010 John­son for Sen­ate Cam­paign sure didn’t help my “fan­dom” since dur­ing the cam­paign, those of us in the Comms shop used him as a barom­e­ter to how well we were doing.  The more insane John got in his nearly daily mis­sives in which he was either attack­ing us or beat­i­fy­ing for­mer Sen. Russ Fein­gold, the bet­ter we knew we had to be doing out there.

Clearly, Feingold’s loss to Ron sure didn’t help Nichols’ san­ity.  Since then — ampli­fied by the Madi­son union protests — Nichols has used his writ­ing assign­ments at the Cap Times (in either his columns or edi­to­ri­als) and at the Neo-Communist mag­a­zine “The Nation (Much of the staff there still doesn’t believe that Alger Hiss worked for the Sovi­ets, even after the KGB released their files on him) to go after John­son every chance he can get.

After all, Ron com­mit­ted the crime of defeat­ing his buddy.  Nichols only has to try to return the favor if that rumored 2016 return and re-match metastasizes…

The Sen­ate Beng­hazi Hear­ing and the Hillary “What Dif­fer­ence Does it Make?” moment is no dif­fer­ent.  Nichols lead the parade — and in fact became the arche­type for much of the MSM defense of then-Sec. of State Clin­ton — against Sen. Johnson.

“John­son was so inept, so ill-informed, that Clin­ton finally pushed back with a response so impas­sioned that it shut John­son up and cre­ated a national sen­sa­tion. Video of John­son inter­rupt­ing Clin­ton again and again — and of her cor­rect­ing him with the line “Well, no, it’s the fact” — revealed the senator’s incom­pe­tence. And it went viral.”

So now the White House’s story on Beng­hazi is blow­ing up around them.  It looks more and more like Sen. John­son was indeed onto some­thing when he was ques­tion­ing Clin­ton and she was stonewalling.  The House Over­sight Com­mit­tee is hav­ing whistle­blow­ers from within the State Depart­ment tes­tify today and Nichols has to do a lit­tle back­track­ing it would seem.

When Clin­ton appeared a few months ago before the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, Wis­con­sin Sen. Ron John­son called into ques­tion her account of the State Department’s response. The “heated exchange” between John­son and Clin­ton drew a lot of cov­er­age, even on Com­edy Cen­tral, where Stephen Col­bert sug­gested, rather indel­i­cately, that John­son was outmatched.

John­son took a lot of crit­i­cism for his approach. And he took even more after he sug­gested that, when Clin­ton spoke with emo­tion in her voice about the deaths of Amer­i­cans at the embassy, she was engag­ing in “the­atrics.” John­son even­tu­ally acknowl­edged that “I prob­a­bly spec­u­lated and I shouldn’t have” about the secretary’s response. And The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Chris Cil­lizza wrote that the Wis­con­sin sen­a­tor had “the worst week in Washington.”

I thought Johnson’s approach was inept and that he seemed unpre­pared, and I wrote as much. The sen­a­tor coun­tered that he had to be aggres­sive because he had only five min­utes to raise what he saw as “a valid point” about “a fail­ure of leadership.”

I know that in these divi­sive times, we don’t often admit to recon­sid­er­ing our assess­ments of those we dis­agree with. But the renewal of the wran­gling over what hap­pened in Libya offers an oppor­tu­nity to do that.

John­son and I share lit­tle com­mon ground now, and I doubt that we ever will. I still think that he could have han­dled the exchange with Clin­ton more ably. But I don’t mind say­ing — as I did in a radio inter­view the other day — that I was far too harsh with the senator.

Here’s why: It is not nec­es­sary to agree with Johnson’s point, or with how he advanced it, to respect that mem­bers of Con­gress should — on issues that they believe to be of great con­se­quence — demand answers from mem­bers of the Cab­i­net and from White House aides. That’s not always easy in a city where the exec­u­tive branch holds so many of the cards. And the process does not nec­es­sar­ily play out grace­fully. Crit­ics will grum­ble about shows of par­ti­san­ship or ide­o­log­i­cal rigidity.

But at the most fun­da­men­tal level, the point of a sys­tem of checks and bal­ances is not the com­fort­able back-and-forth between famil­iar insid­ers. It is the clash that occurs when a mem­ber of the leg­isla­tive branch asks a mem­ber of the exec­u­tive branch dif­fi­cult ques­tions — ques­tions that the indi­vid­ual in the wit­ness chair does not want to answer. That’s what Ron John­son did when he con­fronted Hillary Clinton.

If his­tory proves Johnson’s skep­ti­cism right, he’ll get marks for his aggressiveness.

If his­tory proves him wrong, he’ll take more hits.

That’s about as close to a full apol­ogy as I think we might ever see from Nichols.

No word yet if Hell’s frozen over.

Con­grat­u­la­tions “Chief.”  You’ve earned it.

Now good luck down there.

Repub­li­can Party of Florida Chair­man Lenny Curry today announced the hir­ing of Jus­ton John­son as the organization’s new Exec­u­tive Director.

John­son most recently served as National Field Direc­tor for the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee dur­ing the 2012 cycle. Under his lead­er­ship, the National Vic­tory Pro­gram made more vol­un­teer voter con­tacts than were made in any other cycle. Jus­ton served as cam­paign man­ager for U.S. Sen­a­tor Ron John­son (R-WI), who unseated a pop­u­lar three-term incum­bent in 2010.

“Jus­ton John­son is an accom­plished polit­i­cal pro­fes­sional with more than a decade of expe­ri­ence and suc­cess,” said Curry. “Along with the other new faces at the party, Jus­ton will have a very impor­tant job to do, and I have full con­fi­dence in his leadership.”

Johnson’s other roles have included Polit­i­cal Direc­tor at the Repub­li­can Party of Wis­con­sin, 2008 Wis­con­sin Vic­tory Direc­tor, and Deputy Direc­tor of Polit­i­cal Edu­ca­tion at the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee. John­son also man­aged the cam­paign for Wis­con­sin Attor­ney Gen­eral J.B. Van Hollen dur­ing the dif­fi­cult 2006 elec­tion cycle.

John­son replaces one Mike Gris­som who is now with the Florida Cham­ber of Com­merce. He won’t be the only for­mer staffer of Ron Johnson’s down in the Sun­shine State.

Matt Moon — a friend of mine since 2007 dur­ing my DC days when I was at HUD and he was at the Tax Foun­da­tion — who was Senior Adviser to Ron for the past eight or nine months was named the new Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor for the Florida GOP ear­lier in April.

Got this in my email inbox around 6 this evening.

Looks like some­one (or some board to be more pre­cise) is scared to death of AB 85 becom­ing law.

(MILWAUKEE) – The Mil­wau­kee County Board’s bud­get will be cut by 50 per­cent under a bold new set of ini­tia­tives pro­posed before an “Our Mil­wau­kee County” lis­ten­ing ses­sion Thurs­day night.

The major ini­tia­tive includes but is not lim­ited to gov­ern­ment stream­lin­ing, manda­tory train­ing for County Super­vi­sors to clar­ify roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties in County governance.

“This com­pre­hen­sive pack­age is the kind of bold reform our con­stituents asked for dur­ing the ‘OUR Mil­wau­kee County’ ses­sions and var­i­ous town hall meet­ings across the County,” said Board Chair­woman Marina Dim­itri­je­vic. “We’ve had lis­ten­ing ses­sions in more than half of the County, and Mil­wau­kee County res­i­dents want to see reform done locally, not imposed on the County by the state Leg­is­la­ture. This is the one of the most sig­nif­i­cant and dra­matic over­hauls of Mil­wau­kee County gov­ern­ment in his­tory, and this is what our con­stituents have demanded.

“We lis­tened to every­one – county res­i­dents, state leg­is­la­tors and local offi­cials – to cre­ate real­is­tic Board reform. This pack­age reflects that. It’s been said that we would never reform our­selves, that we would never cut our own salaries, and that we would never cut our bud­get. But this pack­age demon­strates clearly that not only have we lis­tened, we’ve acted with a com­mit­ment to true, real­is­tic, locally gen­er­ated reform.”

Dim­itri­je­vic said that with seven new Board mem­bers “it is a new day for County government.”

“These reforms are proof that this is a new Board with a new out­look on reform,” she said. “We have a new chair, and seven of the 18 mem­bers of the Board are new. Every­one on the Board – new mem­bers and long-time Super­vi­sors – is com­mit­ted to locally gen­er­ated change.”

Super­vi­sors’ pay will be cut by 20 per­cent under the pro­posal, and the board bud­get would be cut $2.75 mil­lion, which could be used for tran­sit, parks, men­tal health and other County services.

The reforms mean that begin­ning in 2016 super­vi­sors pay would be reduced to about $40,000, and that the Chairperson’s salary would be less than that of the Wauke­sha County Board chairperson.

And the plot thickens…

For a counter-proposal, this is more about ass-covering and window-dressing than actual reform.  While the short­en­ing of terms from four years to two years is nice, “The Liar” Dim­itri­je­vic is doing noth­ing beyond lip service.

Staff is stay­ing the same level — It is not needed at the cur­rent lev­els and she’s not touch­ing them at all in her “proposal.”

The board is stay­ing full-time — Should never have been made full-time and again, Dim­itri­je­vic isn’t touch­ing it.

Another thing “for­got­ten” about is shrink­ing the size of the board fur­ther.  Instead you get a bunch of crap about “new mem­bers” and a “new chair­per­son” which is mean­ing­less since the cur­rent board is still bloated, still too big and still too attached to the inter­ests of the pub­lic employ­ees unions, not the taxpayers.

This pro­posal is noth­ing more than an attempt by the sta­tus quo to buy itself time before AB 85 gets a final vote in the Assem­bly (Democ­rats with­held the third read­ing, mean­ing it would have to be taken up next week) and the state Sen­ate gets a look at it.

Dim­itri­je­vic cal­lously con­cludes her press release with this sen­tence, which frankly is a joke.

“Every­thing is on the table,” Dim­itri­je­vic said. “We have said that this new board is com­mit­ted to reform, and we have pre­sented a bold new look for the County Board. We believe this is what the peo­ple of Mil­wau­kee County want – change on a local, not state, level.

Yeah, “every­thing is on the table…” all except for all those things I men­tioned above. Until the board is even will­ing to con­sider any of them, what comes from them as a counter-proposal is noth­ing more than an empty shell meant to con­fuse the pub­lic and buy itself more time to main­tain the sta­tus quo.

All that really needs to be said about the lat­est redis­trict­ing / media fel­la­tio ses­sion held by leg­isla­tive Democ­rats in the state capi­tol today:

Those lead­ers did not advance sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion in 2009-’10, when Democ­rats con­trolled all of state government.

The true sign of the intent of any “power-sharing” leg­is­la­tion is to ask those propos­ing it, would you be propos­ing it if you ran the place?  If that answer is “No,” then you pretty much have all you need to know.

Some­one go check on “cap­per,” he might have to go on the sui­cide watch.

The nearly three-year-old John Doe inves­ti­ga­tion into aides and asso­ciates of Gov. Scott Walker is closed, the judge who is over­see­ing that probe said Friday.

Neal Nettesheim, a retired state appeals court judge, said he entered an order Feb. 21 con­clud­ing the probe. The deci­sion was made pub­lic after Mil­wau­kee County Dis­trict Attor­ney John Chisholm con­cluded paper­work in the case.

No new charges will come from the John Doe inves­ti­ga­tion, Nettesheim said.

Chisholm con­firmed the end of the inves­ti­ga­tion in a state­ment. “After a review of the John Doe evi­dence, I am sat­is­fied that all charges that are sup­ported by proof beyond a rea­son­able doubt have now been brought and con­cluded. As a con­se­quence, last week my office peti­tioned for, and Judge Nettesheim has granted, the clo­sure of the John Doe investigation.”

Mil­wau­kee pros­e­cu­tors launched a secret John Doe inves­ti­ga­tion into aides and asso­ciates of Walker nearly three years ago. Walker’s chief of staff con­tacted pros­e­cu­tors over sus­pi­cions that more than the $11,000 was miss­ing from Oper­a­tion Free­dom, a fund used to pay for an annual event to honor vet­er­ans and their families.

The inves­ti­ga­tion later was broad­ened into other areas, includ­ing another embez­zle­ment case involv­ing Oper­a­tion Free­dom money and two county employ­ees in Walker’s office doing cam­paign work while at their taxpayer-paid county jobs.

Long­time Walker aide Tim­o­thy D. Rus­sell pleaded guilty Nov. 29 to steal­ing more than $21,000 in Oper­a­tion Free­dom money. He was sen­tenced to two years in prison in Jan­u­ary. Kelly Rind­fleisch, who worked for Walker in the county executive’s office in 2010, was sen­tenced Nov. 19 to six months in jail for cam­paign fundrais­ing at the cour­t­house using a secret email sys­tem installed there.

Dar­lene Wink, Walker’s con­stituent ser­vices coor­di­na­tor at the county, pleaded guilty to two mis­de­meanors for doing cam­paign work while on the county clock.

Nettesheim noted that no new tes­ti­mony had been taken in the inves­ti­ga­tion in months. The case had been kept open as a way to release doc­u­ments tied to the crim­i­nal charges that already had been filed.

“No new tes­ti­mony had been taken in the inves­ti­ga­tion in months…”  Hey, remem­ber when our side was say­ing this thing was pretty much over around Labor Day last year and the Left went nuts about it?

Guess who was right?

Oh, I full expect “Walk­er­Gate” updates to con­tinue.  Why?  Because the Left in this state has noth­ing else.

They are obsessed about this, so they have to hang onto it.  They also have NOTHING BUT LOSERS when it comes to poten­tial can­di­dates for 2014 that they have to keep pro­ject­ing that Russ Fein­gold can come to their res­cue as some sort of white knight.

My advice to them regard­ing Fein­gold — Move on, and buy his book.  He’ll be sell­ing it more than him­self for the next few months, if not years.

My other advice to those who have noth­ing bet­ter to do but con­tinue to make an ass out of them­selves over the John Doe, may best be shown visually.

Enjoy.

Believe the real news about this announce­ment is two things.

1) Illi­nois is about to issue $500 mil­lion in new bonds as part of the bud­get plans of Demo­c­ra­tic Gov­er­nor Pat Quinn — the lamest duck gov­er­nor in the coun­try.  This news will only effect the sale of them.

2) The Land of Lin­coln barely dodged the bul­let from drop­ping from an “A-level rated bond” to a “B-level rated bond.”

Illi­nois may have Chicago act­ing as a jobs mag­net to puff up its num­bers, but its rela­tion­ship with its pub­lic employee unions is the dark mir­ror of what Wis­con­sin has done since the enact­ment of Act 10.  Its bud­get is in chaos and a live-action train wreck for all the world to see.

Illi­nois fell to the bot­tom of all 50 states in the rank­ings of a major credit rat­ings agency Fri­day fol­low­ing the fail­ure of Gov. Pat Quinn and law­mak­ers to fix the state’s hem­or­rhag­ing pen­sion sys­tem dur­ing this month’s lame-duck session.

Stan­dard & Poor’s Rat­ings Ser­vice down­graded Illi­nois in what is the lat­est fall­out over the $96.8 bil­lion debt to five state pen­sion sys­tems. The New York rat­ing firm’s rank­ing sig­naled tax­pay­ers may pay tens of mil­lions of dol­lars more in inter­est when the state bor­rows money for roads and other projects.

“It’s absolutely bad news for tax­pay­ers,” said Dan Ruther­ford, the Repub­li­can state trea­surer.
Illi­nois received its bottom-of-the-pack rank­ing when it fell from an “A” rat­ing to “A-minus.”

That’s the same rat­ing as Cal­i­for­nia, but Cal­i­for­nia has a pos­i­tive out­look. Illi­nois’ frag­ile over­all finan­cial sta­tus net­ted it a neg­a­tive out­look, putting it behind Cal­i­for­nia over­all. The rat­ings came out now because Illi­nois plans to issue $500 mil­lion in bonds within days.

Exactly how much Illi­nois’ credit-rating slide ulti­mately will cost tax­pay­ers is unknown until the demand for the state’s bonds is mea­sured in the mar­kets. But Ruther­ford esti­mated the state will pay $95 mil­lion more in inter­est than if Illi­nois had a AAA rat­ing, which is much higher.

Even before the down­grade was revealed, Quinn said in Chicago the “pres­sure is higher than ever” to solve the pen­sion prob­lem because “credit rat­ing agen­cies are scream­ing at the top of their voice” for final action.

[…]

One other omi­nous point in the Stan­dard & Poor’s report is that inac­tion could lead to down­grad­ing Illi­nois to “BBB,” an “unusual” low rat­ing for any state. The agency noted a “lack of action on pen­sion reform and upcom­ing bud­get chal­lenges could result in fur­ther credit deterioration.”

“Most states will build reserves when the econ­omy is per­form­ing well, and that typ­i­cally pro­vides a cush­ion when the rev­enues dete­ri­o­rate,” said Robin Prunty, the S&P ana­lyst who heads the agency’s state rat­ings group. “But Illi­nois has never really car­ried or accu­mu­lated any kind of bud­getary reserves.”

Not sur­pris­ingly, they has been called to deal with pen­sions a mul­ti­tude of times by both Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans in Illi­nois.  Also not sur­pris­ingly, the  state’s pub­lic employee unions have claimed any attempts to change the cur­rent pen­sion sys­tem is uncon­sti­tu­tional and would be fought tooth and nail.

Illi­nois has cre­ated this hell, it is now time for them to burn in it.

From the final para­graph of the opin­ion of 7th Cir­cuit Court Judge David F. Hamil­ton, a 2009 Obama appointee to the court, on the Act 10 ruling.

Hamil­ton, con­curred in parts and dis­sented in oth­ers in a sep­a­rate opinion.

As I said at the out­set, elec­tions have con­se­quences.  The United States Con­sti­tu­tion does not for­bid all leg­is­la­tion that rewards friends and pun­ishes oppo­nents.  The prin­ci­pal pro­vi­sions of Wisconsin’s Act 10 may fit that descrip­tion, but they are still con­sti­tu­tional under the gen­er­ous stan­dard of rational-basis review.

Trans­la­tion:  Best of luck in any future appeal unionistas.

It’s too early to say if it is good or bad, but one thing you can tell early on in the minor­ity lead­er­ship of Mil­wau­kee Demo­c­rat Chris Lar­son is that senior­ity means noth­ing to him.

That’s under­stand­able on one level, Lar­son him­self has only been a state sen­a­tor for two years before his ele­va­tion to lead­er­ship.  But on the other, it is utterly dis­re­spect­ful to many of the more sea­soned mem­bers of his cau­cus.  Already, he’s upset Lena Tay­lor for auc­tion­ing off her spot on the pow­er­ful Joint Finance Com­mit­tee (she was co-chair prior to the Democ­rats los­ing the cham­ber) to Robert Wirch.

Today, the other long-time mem­ber Democ­rats have had on the JFC — and along with Tay­lor, the other Demo­c­rat on the com­mit­tee from 2011 to mid-2012 — Bob Jauch, D-Poplar, had his pub­lic hissy fit. 

Sen. Bob Jauch (D-Poplar) said he didn’t attend Tuesday’s pri­vate meet­ing of Sen­ate Democ­rats because he found it dif­fi­cult to trust Sen­ate Minor­ity Leader Chris Lar­son (D-Milwaukee).

Also miss­ing Tuesday’s meet­ing were Sens. Jon Erpen­bach (D-Middleton) and Lena Tay­lor (D-Milwaukee). The three were the biggest losers in the lead­er­ship fight in Novem­ber.

Erpen­bach lost by one vote in the race for minor­ity leader. Once elected, Lar­son did not reap­point Jauch and Tay­lor to the pow­er­ful Joint Finance Com­mit­tee, instead replac­ing them with Sens. Bob Wirch (D-Kenosha) and Jen Shilling (D-La Crosse).

Erpenbach’s back­ers con­tend Wirch said before the vote he would back Erpen­bach but ulti­mately voted for Lar­son in hopes of secur­ing a seat on the finance com­mit­tee. Wirch has declined to say whom he backed.

“When (Lar­son) decided to barter one of the two Finance posi­tions for his own, I decided I’m going to serve my dis­trict — I don’t serve him,” Jauch said of his deci­sion to miss Tuesday’s meet­ing. “When you decide to put your­self and a title ahead of the best inter­ests of the cau­cus, I think it says more about him than me.”

“I’m still as strong a Demo­c­rat,” he added. “I don’t think I’ve changed. The Sen­ate has changed. I don’t like it.”

Again, as cau­cus leader, Lar­son is enti­tled to have whomever he wants on the Joint Finance Com­mit­tee, but he might be hurt­ing him­self in both the long and short-term.  By pretty much indi­cat­ing com­mit­tee assign­ments are up for sale to the high­est bid­der, Lar­son is show­ing that he can’t be trusted (I know, hard to imag­ine with him.) and that his word is only as good as the moment he gives it to you.

Trust is every­thing, espe­cially inside a cau­cus.  If Lar­son doesn’t have it now, what’s to guar­an­tee it in the future?

Sec­ondly, Jauch is up for re-election in 2014.  Such state­ments as “The Sen­ate has changed. I don’t like it.” tend to lead one to think he’s look­ing for the exits.  The 25th state Sen­ate dis­trict may be reli­ably Democratic-leaning, but he was barely re-elected in the 2010 wave; win­ning by only 51.3 per­cent of the vote.

If Democ­rats are hop­ing to have a chance of tak­ing back the state Sen­ate in 2014, they can’t risk play­ing defense in too many seats.  With the GOP pos­si­bly defend­ing the 1st, 5th, 17th, 23rd and 29th, Democ­rats can’t risk to be defend­ing any other seats besides the likely loss in the 21st.

Larson’s early intra-caucus games make it look like he’s on clear col­li­sion course ensur­ing he fails at tra­di­tional No. 1 job as minor­ity leader — re-elect and build upon party num­bers, so who am I to stop him?   It is his party after all, and if he wants to make sure it is filled with only Walker haters from Madi­son and Mil­wau­kee, that’s his choice.