Deconstructing the Green Acceptance Speech

We all know that the Republicans had their state convention over this past weekend and nominated their only candidate for Governor, Mark Green. I did not have the opportunity to conduct an undercover operation and infiltrate the convention, so I had to rely on Green’s website to learn the content of his acceptance speech.

It is important to know the rhetoric of the other side, so rather than subjecting my readers to actually reading the bumper sticker diatribe, I thought I’d perform a community service and deconstruct the speech.

So much of the speech was empty rhetoric, and misleading slogans, that it was hard to pick and choose what points to address. I will do my best for Wisconsin and all of humanity and attempt to untwist extreme Green’s words.

Green began his speech by fawning over Tommy Thompson.
Green must have been cursing his name only days before. Tommy was clearly not sure that Green was a man that could win in November, and that had to hurt.

Green started right in on the talking point that Wisconsin is a leader in the nation in terms of taxation and the overall tax burden on it’s citizens.
How ironic that he made this point right after praising Tommy Thompson for all of his good work while governor. It was during the Thompson era that Wisconsin’s tax burden was highest. Since he has left the tax burden has begun a steady decline. Not to mention that Mark Green was in the state legislature in the bad old days.

Green claims that Doyle has made Wisconsin a “leader in lawsuits.”
I would enjoy seeing the study or statistics that he is relying on for this point. I dare to say that he has zero support for this claim. Since the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the medical malpractice caps that he helped author, the number of lawsuits did not explode as predicted. It just didn’t happen. Furthermore, Doyle actually signed a compromise bill into law that once again places caps on malpractice cases. So how did that action make us a “leader in lawsuits”?

Once again he makes nearly slanderous accusations that Doyle and Company have been selling our state government.
Has someone been charged, tried and convicted and I don’t know about it? Neither Doyle nor anyone close to him has been implicated by any law enforcement agency of any wrong doing. The only people trying to single handedly accuse and convict people of crimes is Mark Green and his pals. Furthermore, the state contracting process has been evaluated and “called sound.”

Now this next one is rich, so brace yourselves! Green actually blames Doyle for the state’s budget problems. He says that Doyle has “mismanaged the budget.”
Why didn’t Green simply turn around and point a finger at the guy behind him? Governor Doyle inherited a several billion dollar deficit, which he has nearly cut in half in his first term while still supporting education.

Green’s next outrageous statement was claiming that Doyle has been spending massive amounts of money and “increasing the taxpayer’s credit card.”
Yet it is Mark Green that holds a seat in a Republican controlled Congress that has spent it’s way into record debt. This spending has been so bad that Congress has had to repeatedly increase the debt limits on Mark Green’s watch.

In reference to school choice, Green refers to Doyle as someone that is “standing in the schoolhouse door” (I’m assuming he’s referring to minority students).
The clear point here is to compare Jim Doyle to the racist southern governors of the past. Let’s hope that Green does not talk about running a “clean campaign” free of personal attacks. There are few personal attacks that are more disgusting than his against Doyle here.

Green takes Doyle to task for not accepting his challenge to limit spending in the race for Governor.
Mark Green has never limited the money that he has raised or spent while running for re-election to Congress. He has never accepted such a challenge when he was the one in the race with all of the money (which was always the case).

Green praises our state for giving birth to “a new experiment called kindergarten.”
During the same weekend event that he makes this comment, he and his party resolve to totally eliminate a very effective four-year-old kindergarten program.