Curmudgeon's Corner

Conservatives Question Tommy

Posted by Al Campbell on June 23, 2012

Wisconsin, Political, U.S.

Republican Senate candidate Tommy Thompson received some tough questions at an Oconomowoc-area meeting that had plenty of conservatives in the audience.  He is leading the group of primary candidates and polls above Tammy Baldwin at the moment.  The other primary candidates poll under Baldwin at this point.  That is likely more a function of name recognition than anything else.  I have to believe that whoever runs on the Republican ticket will defeat Baldwin; if I prove to be wrong, I won’t be the only sad person in the state; I’ll have plenty of company.

The group of conservatives had some difficult questions for Tommy and those all were pointed at just how conservative Tommy is today compared to his record.  I don’t have any idea if he sold the group as a whole or how many individual members were convinced, but this points to just how many prospective Republican voters have critical questions about each of the candidates.

Some fear that this angst over conservatism might cause a rush to the right that could be a somewhat disingenuous adoption of that belief system.  We of the conservative mindset have seen such moves before from candidates who, after being elected, lost sight of those leanings rather quickly.  They tend to profess that those moves were mandated by the realities of governance, and can sell that rationale while others have not been able to close that sale.

I remain without a favorite at this point; I am, for once, undecided as is a large chunk of the conservative electorate.  I do have concerns that conservatism is a bit different today than it was for Tommy, neither better nor worse, but different.  There are more members of Congress that are more conservative today than in the past, and they have caused conservatism to become more pronounced than it has been historically.  This proliferation also tends to make more votes have a conservative element that wouldn’t have existed before.  There were shades of more liberal and less liberal, but there were not usually enough differences to be able to label one liberal and the other conservative.

At the moment, I have a concern with Tommy being a one-term Senator, given his age, as much as I do with the degree of conservatism present.  I like Hovde as a new face who reminds me of Senator Ron Johnson since he comes from the private sector and that really breeds conservatives.  I think Fitzgerald is probably the most proven conservative of the group.  And, I still remember what I thought was not the best of campaign tactics by Neumann in his last outing.

The one thing of which I feel certain is that Wisconsin does not need to be remembered for having sent a nearly-pure socialist to the U.S. Senate in the person of Tammy Baldwin.