Walker now defends Protesters, but backs "Ann Coulter Bill" Punishing Free Speech on UW Campuses

Not many Governors have a calm, detached sociopathic speaking style like Scott Walker, thank god. And while he demands that same low key communication style from his most vociferous opponents, there's still no way he's ever going to change his mind.

Walker is the best argument against career politicians, because guys like Walker see only politics and pure ideological policy as the end game, not good public policy.

The Walker Authority Shredded the First Amendment during 2011 Capitol Protests against Union Busting Act 10: How could the nation forget:

The government is forbidden from making a “law abridging the freedom of speech…or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” … but in 2011 ... Scott Walker, concluded … residents did not warrant 1st Amendment protections ... Walker’s response, typical of a fascist unaccustomed to being challenged, was to have many protesters arrested and fined for exercising their 1st Amendment rights; something Dane County Judge Frank Remington ruled was unconstitutional.

The conservative McIver Institute Director of Communications Nick Novak was angry that the six protestors claimed being arrested caused them embarrassment, created difficulties finding a job, and fostered a negative stigma in their personal records that will follow them for the rest of their lives. The real victims who deserved reparations, according to the belief tank … were “multiple Republican legislators that were harassed in the halls of the capitol and the governor who was routinely compared to Adolf Hitler.”

On Upfront with Mike Gousha, Walker provided his most laughably outlandish moment of hypocrisy yet; defending free political speech and their constitutionally protected protesters. Walker finally reached what was once believed to be an unreachable level of bullshitting, but he did it, and with a straight face to boot:



I hope you're sitting down...

Walker: "Whether it's against me or somebody else say, "I disagree," but disagreeing and even protesting is one thing, if you come into an auditorium where they're having a discussion or a conversation on this, and you want to hold signs up, you want to protest that, you want to rally out front, perfectly fine. But the minute you shut down a speaker, no matter whether they're liberal, conservative, or somewhere in between, I just think that's wrong." To me a university...anywhere free speech should be upheld...but disrupting and shutting down as we've seen here in Wisconsin, but elsewhere across the country, shutting down the ability for someone to actually be heard is not free speech."

Here's a short recap of bill Walker is talking about above, and now backs on our UW campuses:

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R- Rochester, and Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, proposed legislation (that) would set new rules for free speech and expression on University of Wisconsin System campuses. That includes penalties for people who disrupt free expression on campus by engaging in "violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, obscene, unreasonably loud or other disorderly conduct" … Students could be expelled under a bill.

That sharply contrasts with his recent comments at CPAC during his infamously flawed run for president:

“I want a commander in chief who will do everything in their power to ensure that the threat from radical Islamic terrorists does not wash up on American soil. If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world.”

But his comments weren't the only ones that trashed the peaceful protests directed at what we thought were accountable elected politicians:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R) of Wisconsin denounced what he saw as "mob rule" trying to thwart the electoral will of the people, citing specficially the "amount of thuggery, the threats of execution" against Republican lawmakers.

University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse viewed the events in the Capitol as a near-total breakdown of law and order. "How do you like this new democracy, that has a mob storming the Capitol and, with the aid of the minority party, blocking the access of the majority party into their offices and into the legislative chamber?" Professor Althouse wrote on her blog. "It looks more like anarchy to me."

To others, this was precisely the sort of situation for which the guarantee clause was created.

"It is hard to recall many moments that more directly echo the concerns of the founders than the situation America faces today, with a mob of protesters, some bused in from out of state by labor unions bent on protecting their financial interests, occupying the state house at Madison and the governor there under heavy guard," states a New York Sun editorial.
Cornell University law professor William Jacobson wrote on his blog, Legal Insurrection ... The appearance of a bullhorn-toting protester on Feb. 27 in a "COPS FOR LABOR" T-shirt showed that "the police union members involved have actively advocated and offered to participate in insurrection against the legal authority in Wisconsin."

But the Guarantee Clause obviously doesn't apply: 

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.-ARTICLE IV, SECTION 4

In reality, the Guarantee Clause would protect us from the likes of Scott Walker:

Cornell University law professor Aziz Rana, author of "The Two Faces of American Freedom," wrote, "the truth about the guarantee clause is that its initial purpose was less a concern with popular protest and far more a worry with potential backsliding by state governments into aristrocratic or monarchical forms of government," says "That would suggest to me that ... peaceful protest combined with local police sympathy and the decision by some legislators to flee to Illinois are not issues that would invoke the guarantee clause." 

Wisconsin Republicans kept the fear mongering myth about protester violent alive, and that there was massive destruction of public property by liberal vandals. Nope, never happened:

The protests were peaceful, on the whole – with only 18 arrests during more than three weeks of steady protests in Madison – but critics question whether Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney, too, was taking sides.

"We are seeing democracy in action, people engaging in their government, making their issues known," Sheriff Mahoney told Time magazine. " I'm very proud that the people of Wisconsin are engaged in their government and shown the rest of the world how democracy works." At one point, he said his deputies "aren't palace guards."

No Vandalism either...according to PolitiFact, the highly publicized cost of repairs, do to protester vandalism, got all the necessary political mileage, despite being a Pants on Fire lie:

By March 7, 2011, the Department of Administration reported that all signs and banners in the Capitol had been removed. Some of the signs are being considered for preservation by the Wisconsin Historical Society or the Smithsonian Institution.

The protesters "have adopted an ownership ethic in the building, treating it with the utmost care and respect," wrote Jason Tish, executive director of the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation and a local field representative for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

He called the demonstrators "evangelistic about their respect for the building." "The extent of what I saw today is just chips and nicks -- cosmetic damage," he said in an interview. "I don’t see how they (protesters) could have conducted themselves any better." Tish said the building bore the signs of the "accelerated cumulative effects of lots of people going through the building. I saw no intentional damage." The new estimate: $347,500, some 20 times less than the original one. And there are indications that even that could be high.

This smells like an effort to pour gas on the anti-protester fire. The claim was ridiculously high. And that gets a Pants on Fire rating.