Walker's Ready to Compromise (His Integrity)

18 August 2011

Dear Scott Walker,

It is with the usual disgust that I read your latest interviews, and after listening to the full audio clip of your conversation with WisPolitics on Monday (8/15), I feel compelled to write you once again, to remind you to stop lying about "what you've heard people say."

What has Walker given up so far, besides his integrity? Photo

Ever since the Republicans lost two seats in the Senate, and even moreso now that the Democrats have retained their own, you've been trying to build a case for yourself as the Moderate Middleman, the Great, Misunderstood Conciliator. Using vocabulary a child perhaps scripted for you, you repeat the same lame lines about bipartisanship and how you're suddenly so ready and willing to work together and compromise and move past the recalls and jobs jobs jobs jobs...

As charming an attempt this may be to quick trick people into forgetting about what a bullying brute you are, I'm afraid it comes too late. And we're not fooled in the least.

Because we aren't about to forget how many times you told us "there's nothing to negotiate." We aren't going to forget how you and your lackeys shut down debate, ignored public and professional testimony, and continue to pretend that you simply don't hear the voices of dissent exploding all around you.

Your arrogance in thinking you can earn back the trust and the support of the people of Wisconsin (much less the legislators of this state who now know you'll throw anyone under the bus!) is staggering. And it's rivaled only by your disrespect for the intelligence of your consituents in thinking (wrongly, of course) that we're just going to "move on" and forget the fireworks that were your detonating the bomb that split this state apart.  

Your sudden willingness to "work together" and "compromise" only proves what we already knew: that the only thing you'll ever compromise are the principles that you campaigned on, your allegiance to the people, and your respect for this state. All of those have been compromised quite enough already. Your integrity, assuming it ever existed, was apparently compromised long before I heard your name. Please spare us the humiliation of seeing you "compromise" anything else.

Representative Peter Barca has already called you out on this nonsense, reminding us that 

When he went to Washington, D.C. to testify before Congress under oath, Gov. Walker said, "bipartisanship is not so good."

And the very day that voters were going to the polls last week to remove two Republican senators in a historic rebuke of the governor’s extreme, divisive agenda, Gov. Walker hid his signing of the most partisan redistricting laws in Wisconsin history.
On the floor of the legislature, Gov. Walker's Republican rubber-stamps have rejected 375 Democratic amendments out of hand, even though many were common sense measures that emphasized accountability or saved money.  And exactly zero Assembly Democratic bills have passed this session.

It is  Gov. Walker's unwillingness to give up his extreme agenda and double-talk that have Wisconsinites feeling so betrayed that half of the state feels that he needs to be removed from office immediately.

If Gov. Walker sincerely wants to work with Democrats he needs to first stop using bipartisanship as a cover for his own partisan actions. If he doesn't, then he ignores the will of the middle-class and the recall election results at his own peril.

Your schoolyard psychology doesn't work on us, Scott Walker. To put it in the terms that bullies like you understand most clearly, you can't take away all the marbles and then say "I'm ready to play nice." There are consequences for bad behaviors and in this case, you're going to get a time out. A nice, long, permanent political time out.  We call it a RECALL. You can think of it as a recess.

Or, you could just drop out again, like you did in college. Maybe you can even get one of your sponsors to buy you a VP bid and you can run away to bigger and better things like your idol Palin did, too. Whatever you choose, I wish you the worst, in all of your endeavors.

In the meantime, stop lying. Stop ignoring us. Like we always say: We won't forget. We will recall.

And I would really appreciate it if you would just resign, since you apparently suddenly care so much about how much elections cost. This will save us a lot of trouble.  

Yours in dissent, and also fury,

Heather DuBois Bourenane
Wisconsin voter, taxpayer, parent and person whose specific comments you refuse to keep in mind



P.S. What are your supporters going to do with all those "He's got nads" shirts now that you're a moderate centrist?  Your base must be so disappointed in you! Little girls whose parents let them wear profane shirts to school and companies that are being capitalistic must feel very threatened by this terrible news.