{"id":9337,"date":"2024-03-05T12:28:39","date_gmt":"2024-03-05T13:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=9337"},"modified":"2024-03-05T14:00:47","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T14:00:47","slug":"making-lemonade-out-of-lemons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=9337","title":{"rendered":"Making lemonade out of lemons"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.bootsandsabers.com\/2024\/03\/05\/making-lemonade-out-of-lemons\/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=making-lemonade-out-of-lemons<\/a><\/p>\n

My column for the Washington County Daily News<\/em> is online and in print<\/a>. Here\u2019s a part:<\/p>\n

\n

While the focus of the maps has been on political lean of each district, the opportunity for Republicans \u2014 by which I mean the Republican voters and not the elected Republicans \u2014 comes in the shakeup of incumbency. According to Ballotpedia, 99% of incumbents of state politicians of either party won re-election in 2022; 97% of them won in 2020. Wisconsin does not have term limits and the power of incumbency is, by far, the greatest force in state elections.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under Evers\u2019 gerrymandered maps, he intentionally drew as many districts as possible to pit Republican incumbents against each other. Thirty-five incumbent Republicans are now in districts with other incumbent Republicans compared with only seven incumbent Democrats. This is Evers\u2019 attempt to counter the power of incumbency and to encourage Republican infighting to sap their strength before a general election.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Republican voters, this is an opportunity to inject a substantial amount of new blood, new faces, and new ideas into the legislative Republican caucuses. Our system of government was never meant to be a job bank for career politicians. The outcome of incumbency is that elected Republicans are often reflecting the views of their constituents from when they were first elected instead of their constituents\u2019 current views. And while a few career politicians remain energetic and effective for their constituents throughout their tenures, too many Wisconsin politicians slouch into the comfortable Madison scene and begin representing Madison\u2019s interests instead of their constituents\u2019 interests.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the power of incumbency disrupted, Republican voters have a chance to have a rigorous debate during the primary to ensure that the elected Republican class is representing the views of the Republican electorate. Let us have that debate on issues and values. Then, let Wisconsin\u2019s Republicans unite in the general election to elect Republican majorities in the Assembly and Senate to ensure that the other two branches of government are not left unchecked to force their Leftist ideologies and turn Wisconsin into Illinois.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.bootsandsabers.com\/2024\/03\/05\/making-lemonade-out-of-lemons\/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=making-lemonade-out-of-lemons My column for the Washington County Daily News is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boots-sabers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9337"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9338,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9337\/revisions\/9338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}