By Joe Bast
The humiliating loss of conservative Brad Schimel to liberal Susan Crawford in the April 1 Wisconsin Supreme Court election has forced a discussion of how the GOP in Wisconsin needs to “break the old model” of campaigning to once again start winning statewide elections. Donald Trump won the presidential election Wisconsin arguably 3 times in a row if not for election fraud, each time by a larger margin than the last time. What tactics did he use that we should adopt?
One is to criticize the MOTIVES of his opponents by giving them vibrant and even entertaining labels: traitors (immigration), perverts (LBGTQ agend), socialists (tax and spend), racists (CRT), and baby killers (abortion). This is almost the only tactic the left uses in elections – “he’s a racist! He’s anti-woman! He’s a tyrant!” It allows them to define our candidates and their own while we stay on the high road and mostly push positive messages about our candidates’ character and ideas.
Agree with him or not, Trump has clearly demonstrated that attacking your opponents’ motives with high energy and mocking humor (“Tampon Tim,” “Sleepy Joe,” “Pocahontas”) gets the MAGA base, young people, and low-propensity voters to turn out in sufficient numbers to win statewide elections in Wisconsin.
Many of us who devoted much of our lives and even careers to paving the high road have always opposed this tactic. We feared it would turn off the moderate voters. But how many moderates are listening or even care anymore? Moderates are less important than they once were … and maybe they were never as important as the lying partisan pollsters told us they were. Now we know the “swing voters” are young, minority, and low-propensity voters. Getting them to turn out is what determines the winner in close elections.
We need to rethink our opposition to “going negative” early, often, fiercely, and with humor. If we aren’t comfortable engaging in it ourselves, then we should fund and not criticize those who do.
In a recent essay, Hillsdale president Larry Arnn correctly identifies a second Trump tactic that works: Ask for the moon and settle for less. He describes Trump’s attack on Harvard University, once upon a time America’s most revered institution of higher education:
“What’s happening right now is classic Trump,” Mr. Arnn says. “He’s negotiating, and I don’t know any better than anybody else what he intends, except he does appear to intend that Harvard is going to reform itself in some big ways.” It is his way “to ask for more than he is likely to get in the beginning. He seems to do that all the time.”
In his Monday response to the Trump administration, Harvard’s president objected to “direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.” Mr. Arnn agrees: “I don’t think Trump ought to run Harvard. I doubt if he thinks that. But I do think that we’re spending a lot of money at Harvard. It’s a very unbalanced institution. And goodness’ sakes, some of the kids are not safe there, because of their race, or religion, or both. And so, should the taxpayer be funding that?”
Trump COULD just go around asking “should the taxpayer be funding that?” That’s a reasonable question that should appeal to moderates. But Trump isn’t trying to win over the now-mythical moderate voter. Attacking Ivy League schools -- which 99% of voters will never attend or have children who will attend -- is a soft target that appeals to swing voters and the MAGA base.
This second tactic is very different from what the current GOP leadership and most elected Republicans in Wisconsin are doing. They allow Gov. Evers to call for a 30% or 40% increase in state spending and then they “negotiate” for “only” a 10% or 15% increase. They ask the governor to approve modest tax cuts after they vote to pass his budget request, and then complain when he vetoes them. They keep shoveling more money to the UW system and hope the leftists they are feeding don’t criticize them even more fiercely than they do already.
There’s a label for that kind of behavior: Abused spouse syndrome.
UW-Madison and the Ivy League schools either don’t bother to respond to questions about their taxpayer funding or they trot out their old “university research is essential and saves lives.” Trump calls them names and calls for rapidly defunding them, even challenging their tax-exempt status and taxing their endowments. THAT gets their attention. Now there is a national debate about the waste, fraud, and bias of Ivy League schools.
Trump will settle for reforms that make universities less left-wing and more efficient, but he leads with accusations (once again) about the MOTIVES of academics and university administrators and threatens their funding immediately by freezing grants already in the pipeline, forcing them to defend themselves. This is what it took to bring the problem of left-wing bias on college campuses to the forefront of the debate and is likely to result in changes to university policies after five decades of ineffective complaining by conservatives.
Should the Wisconsin GOP follow suit and launch a campaign against taxpayer funding of the University of Wisconsin - Madison? For decades it has been a sacred cow in Wisconsin politics, practically untouchable, and growing bigger, fatter, and more liberal with every passing year. I say it’s time to call for its complete defunding. Save taxpayers money, force the university to fix its problems, and turn the state’s focus to real education and learning rather than leftist ideology and woke nonsense.