We just returned from a week in Door County, Wisconsin, tracing my wife’s family history with the establishment of the cherry orchards in the late 1800s up there above the 45th parallel.
The 45th parallel is halfway between the equator and the North Pole. It is nice in the summer. Not sure about the winter.
While there, we saw and heard about the politics in a true swing state, Wisconsin, from the people who mattered the most ― local legal registered voters.
Trump won North Carolina twice by an average of 124,000 votes. Donald Trump barely won Wisconsin in 2016 by 22,748 votes. Joe Biden barely won the state in 2020 by 20,682 votes. They were probably the same truly independent swing voters who really didn’t like Hillary Clinton and really didn’t like Trump four years later. They probably really don’t like Biden, which should mean, by extension, they won’t like his vice president, Kamala Harris, either once they find out more about her.
We saw two signs on the way from Egg Harbor through Fish Creek and then to Ephraim. The first was blue and said: ‘VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS: THEY VOTE FOR US!”
The other one was red and said: “Have You Had Enough Yet? Vote Republican.”
The number of blue signs was surprising given that most rural areas in every state are strongholds for Republicans and Donald Trump. “They are wasting their time and money,” said one staunch Republican. “Everyone knows Milwaukee and Madison are going to vote 80/20 for any Democrat over any Republican in every race. It just matters how many rural voters get up and vote early in-person and on Election Day” he said in his sing-song Scandinavian accent.
Democratic signs were deliberately ambiguous. If yard signs were given truth serum, the blue signs would have blared: “Democrats support abortion on demand; massive spending giveaways to other Democrats; letting 10 million more illegal immigrants cross the border unchecked and unverified; cancellation of rich kids’ student debt and letting criminals out of jail early ― oh, and they don’t care if they jack up inflation rates so no one can afford food or gas any more either.”
“That dog won’t hunt in rural areas,” another partisan Republican said. “But somehow, it does work in major metropolitan cities in Wisconsin just like it works in New York and San Francisco.”
Wisconsin is like North Carolina ― they are not even a light shade of lavender or periwinkle purple. If both states were bowties, they would be very deep red with a few splotches of bright royal blue on them.
On the other hand, Republican signs could have added one word and everyone would have known what they meant: “Have You Had Enough (Government) Yet?”
Virtually every problem America faces today has been caused by government. Ronald Reagan said it best in his first inaugural address in 1981 when he said: “Government is not the solution to the problem: government is the problem.”
Excessive government spending and deficit financing exacerbate inflation. Inflation forces banks to charge higher interest on mortgage loans. No enforcement of the border means local governments are swamped by welfare payments to noncitizens and higher police costs. Reckless authoritarian decisions made by Biden to cancel billions of dollars of student debt add to more national indebtedness. Federal edicts and regulatory strangulation of domestic energy producers have made America dependent on foreign oil again after four years of energy independence under Trump.
We had the added benefit of meeting a couple from Minneapolis over a campfire who could not contain themselves when it came to talking about how terrible their Gov. Tim Walz has been, first as mayor of Minneapolis and then as governor.
“He let the BLM rioters burn down the city. … It has not recovered since. Downtown Minneapolis is one of the most unsafe places for any Minnesotan to visit nowadays. He is a Maoist left-wing communist who wants higher taxes on everyone; more restrictions on business and kids to be given puberty-blockers at public schools without parental consent. It would be a travesty if he was elected VP under President Kamala Harris. God help us all if he becomes president one day because he is even farther to the left than she is, and she is from San Francisco!”
Those were the nice things they had to say about Walz.
Republicans should heed Napoleon’s maxim when it comes to dealing with the extreme far-left comments by Harris and Walz: “Never interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself.”
Just run a billion ads of them saying what they believe in their own words and let them undo themselves.
