Shortly after Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan announced on Tuesday he was turning down the opportunity to run for retiring Democratic senator Herb Kohl’s seat, Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW) spokesman Graeme Zielinskitweeted that Ryan was a “coward” for deciding to remain as chair of the House Budget Committee.
Set aside, for a moment, the lunacy of designating someone a “coward” who has put forth a plan so bold, Democrats have attacked him relentlessly for its audacity. In essence, Democrats for months have been calling on Ryan to actually be more cowardly.
More importantly, these aren’t the words of someone on the fringe — they are the innermost thoughts of someone paid by the state’s Democrats to represent them in public. Zielinski’s emetic Twitter feed reads as though it were written by someone with an undiscovered gas leak in his apartment. During the fall campaigns last year, Zielinski tweeted that Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker “shames” Wisconsin, and called Walker’s running mate, Rebecca Kleefisch, a “lunatic” just days before she had colon-cancer surgery.
Of course, Zielinski is simply reading straight out of the DPW employment manual. Mike Tate, chair of the DPW, branded Tea Party rally attendees in 2010 as “extremist elements” who “frankly don’t believe in this country.” Tate compared people with rational concerns about government spending to “red-baiting McCarthyites, the Know-Nothings and the KKK.”
Tate and Zielinski apparently still aren’t aware that their buffoonery is counterproductive (and many hope they never figure it out). The GOP swept the state’s major elections in 2010, taking the Assembly, Senate, the governorship, a U.S. Senate seat, as well as picking up two House seats. While Democrats all over the country were extending an olive branch to voters, Tate and Zielinski were spraying their party with voter repellent. Their vile puerility did for the Wisconsin Democrats what Osama bin Laden did for Abbottabad as a family vacation destination.
Ironically, in his tweet about Ryan, Zielinski used a hashtag to reference Ryan (#RepPaulRyan), not Ryan’s Twitter handle (@RepPaulRyan). This prevented his tweet from showing up on Ryan’s feed, where Ryan or his staff could have actually seen it. Pretty brave.
Oh, and shortly after Ryan announced his decision not to run, Democratic Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett pulled his name from consideration. No word from Zielinski on Barrett’s “cowardice.”
— Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.