Tommy Thompson Can Add Big Boost to Tea Party

The April 15th TEA Party in Madison was a beautiful day of excitement and fellowship which I will remember and cherish forever. The weather was perfect, the disrupters a non-factor and the Feingold antiprotest pathetic. There were many excellent speakers and guests, many of whom us TEA partiers have heard and seen many times before and love dearly such as Vicki McKenna, Larry Gamble, Mark Block, Pastor David King, TimDake, Linda Hansen and many others. These individuals have taken this movement upon their shoulders to strengthen our numbers, articulate our purpose and continue to move us forward. Anew speaker electrified the crowd – a young man of 19 years from UW Oshkosh named Ethan Hollenberger. WOW! Can this guy speak! And you know he means every word of it! I had the pleasure of meeting Ethan in person at the rally. A copy of the speech he gave to the Appleton TEA Party later that day can be found in this edition of Reality News along with a flier for an upcoming event at UW Oshkosh Ethan has organized. He has arranged to bring to Oshkosh Chris Horner, renowned climate skeptic whose work has been paramount in uncovering this massive scam. I think Ethan will make a great Governor someday. What is the minimum age, anyway?

Speaking of Governors, Wisconsin’s longest serving former Governor, Tommy Thompson, also came to the TEA Party and gave a wonderful, fiery speech. Some within the TEA Party movement were a bit disenchanted with Tommy addressing this event. Since Tommy had been contemplating running for Senate against Russ Feingold, many feared Tommy was going to hijack this event to launch his Senatorial campaign. That didn’t happen. Tommy instead announced that he will not be running for Senate against Russ Feingold. Many including myself feel that Tommy’s time as a dayto- day politician are behind him, though his legacy for Wisconsin is great. We feel that we need to elect someone without the political baggage an old time political Titan like Tommy inevitably amasses.

I, like many in the movement, would not have voted for Tommy Thompson in the Republican Primary. Some candidates in the race are certainly reflective of the TEA party movement and would be excellent choices to represent us in Washington. The matter of each candidate’s ability to actually be elected remains to be seen. And who knows who else may join the fray. There are several other well-qualified individuals with both the character and resources to win the Republican nomination and go on to sink Russ Feingold in the general election. We need a field of many candidates so that the Republican primary can serve its function to thoroughly vet all candidates and articulate the party’s position on key issues.

Regarding Thompson, I think a fair and honest reflection shows that people tend to be extra critical of politicians they have supported in the past when they do something they don’t like and tend to recognize the good points of politicians which do almost nothing that they agree with. For example, people are quick to point out that Russ Feingold voted against TARP and Paul Ryan voted for it. When you put these votes in context, however, the actions of these two men are the polar opposite of this TARP paradox. Since the TARP vote, of which I was highly critical of Paul Ryan for supporting it, he has shown immense political courage in facing the Democrats in Congress and the President himself on all the fiscal and social tragedies the Democrats are trying to impose in spite of overwhelming opposition of the American people. Good ol’ Russ Feingold has done all he can to support all of these nightmares, from government takeover of healthcare to regulating carbon dioxide to initiating relations with Fidel Castro. Yet we tend to renounce Paul Ryan for his one moment of weakness and exalt Russ Feingold for his one vote which represented our will. One can look deeper into these paradoxical votes of Mr. Feingold and find out the true motive, that being these votes were political freebees, not ideology. In other words, he voted that way because he could.

We need to remember that Tommy Thompson did an incredibly great job in transforming a once dead Wisconsin business climate into a tempest of job growth and industrial innovation. I remember his election campaign for Governor in 1986 as I began my first job in the private sector at age 23 in the infant business segment of chemical waste disposal and recycling. Things around the country were going gangbusters yet we continued to be mired in the economic doldrums in Wisconsin. Tommy facilitated changes in the tax code and regulatory approach in many areas to make Wisconsin a much more attractive location for industry and entrepreneurs. Tommy never left anything to chance. He always made himself available to business leaders to hear about issues and problems they struggled with so that tangible solutions could be formulated and implemented. An utterly complete contrast to our present Governor, Jim Doyle.

Thompson also spearheaded innovative approaches to the great social problems of public education and welfare. He had the courage to move forward with school choice and the voucher system as well as real welfare reform (W2). Both of these successful initiatives resulted in other states and even the Federal government to adopt similar policies.

While the state government continued to bloat under Thompson, especially in his later years as Governor, we must remember that this neglect was partly the result of his successful policies regarding taxes and business. The economy boomed and the revenue kept flowing in. Future Governors adopting similarly successful policies must have the character and self-will to continue to shrink the size of government in spite of continued rises in revenue. These good times are exactly the best times to make the cuts of unnecessary and duplicative government services.

Tommy’s time in Washington with the Bush administration as Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, I’m sure, was much more eventful than he ever dreamed possible. With 9/11, the anthrax scare, SARS, and a host of other new and quite critical events that kept happening, Tommy became a regular figure in the national media. Some say these days in the Washington DC bubble transformed him into a Big Government guy for good. While that remains to be seen, I think we just saw at the TEA party that Tommy has made a good faith effort to reach out to us. He realizes that his day as THE guy, THE politician are behind him. But his legacy of what he has done for Wisconsin will always precede him, and he can play an enormous part in rekindling that spirit and provide direction to the Republican Party in formulating and articulating what specific policies will be IMPLEMENTED if the keys to the governmental chambers are entrusted to them again.