Breaking News: Scott Walker schooled by Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield - News Paper

Bob Dylan sang in 1964 "the times they are a-changin'."

The musical group Buffalo Springfield sang some years later "there's something happening here, but what it is ain't exactly clear." 

So I'm glad to see this strong story in the Wisconsin State Journal that suggests that indeed the times are a-changin' because there's something clear happening here:

Unease growing in Wisconsin GOP base over environmental rollbacks

Since taking over state government in 2011, Republicans have eased pollution enforcement, sold off public lands, rolled back protection of ground water, curtailed Department of Natural Resources scientific research, and silenced DNR experts who once were free to publicly comment on legislative proposals...

But Republican-leaning hunters and anglers have begun debating whether the changes have gone so far that they are threatening the lakes, streams and access to hunting land that have made the state great, said Rodney Sempf, a middle school teacher in northeastern Wisconsin who loves to hunt and fish.

I've argued that Walker's contemptuous enabling of widespread and continuing environmental pollution harms traditional Wisconsin values and treats his voting base with a contempt which would catch up with him:

Walker's politics of indifference ignores base, basics

I'd argue that of late he's taking his successes for granted and following...the Politics of Indifference - - when it comes to much of his base, and to basic governance, too.

Exhibit "A?" Yesterday's solid defeat in North Western Wisconsin of a key Walker GOP legislative ally in a special State Senate election for a seat which Republicans have held for the last sixteen years.

Here are several more substantive examples where Walker's stale careerism, distraction by presidential ambition and mail-it-in lassitude towards a base he's taking for granted could spark his undoing in November, 2018... 

what constituencies - - rural well water users, outdoors' business owners, anglers, hunters, hikers - - are served by the skyrocketing numbers of polluted waterways in the state, as well as the expanding numbers of big farms and dairy operations whose fertilizers and manure run off downstream or leach into the water table?

As I said last year, the GOP had rebranded itself as The Pollution Party:

How else to frame the selloff of the Wisconsin environment which[former WI DNR Secretary Cathy] Stepp carried out in the names of Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality' and his big business bellhops in the Legislature and Attorney General's office as they sped up the giveaway of the state's rivers, wetlands, clean air and streams to any mining company or developer or manure manufacturer who wants them?

Here's the logo of the new Pollution Party.

And it's exactly clear. 

from The Political Environment http://ift.tt/2FeWWtu
Breaking News: Scott Walker schooled by Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield - News Paper