{image1}This is not an ad for the re-election of Mary Panzer: She has not approved this message.
But the fact is that the incumbent senator from West Bend may have irrevocably self-sabotaged her seat and career by: a) calling the Legislature back into special session without b) having enough votes to pass a constitutional limitation on taxation and government spending.
Earlier this year, Panzer had the moral high ground on this matter at least in sight. She knew: a) she didn't have the votes but b) could have stalled, and been right to do it by saying she was defending the constitution against manic efforts to vote on amendments that were little more than doodles and brainstorms and spin.
But she lost that opportunity -- and maybe, her incumbency -- with a last-minute cave-in to Assembly Republicans who presented her with a primary opponent. We'll know next month if Panzer can withstand the challenge of state Rep. Glenn Grothman, (also a West Bend Republican), who is running with the loud support of southeastern Wisconsin's shrill, conservative AM talk radio.
To hear some Capitol insiders tell it, Panzer is the victim of some nasty gender politics: One Assembly Democrat told me last week that the Assembly Republican caucus from which Grothman sprang at Panzer is like "a boys' club ... a fraternity," and that part of the Assembly's fury at Panzer's inability to get the constitutional amendment moving was that it was a woman holding things up.
You can chalk that view up to routine partisanship and Capitol backbiting, but it's worth asking -- not so much in defense of Panzer but with an eye towards history -- why is it when the Republican Party in southeast Wisconsin concludes that one of its incumbents is not conservative enough, it's a female who gets the boot?
If Grothman succeeds in essentially recalling Panzer -- and she is not only the Senate majority leader but the first female to hold that position in Wisconsin, ever -- it will be the second recent intra-party coup administered from the right to a sitting Republican state senator: The same thing happened in 2002 to then-Sen. Peggy Rosenzweig, R-Wauwatosa.
She was ousted by now incumbent state Sen. Tom Reynolds, R-West Allis, who is farther to the right than was the moderate Rosenzweig, and, for that matter, farther to the right than just about everyone else in the Legislature.
So is part of the modern Republican message that party politics is a manly art, a macho kind of thing?
If you look and listen carefully to some Republican or conservative spokesmen and women, you hear invocations of the virtues of tough masculinity, forgetting or discounting that more than half the population and electorate is female.
There was California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ripping his Democratic opponents in the California legislature as "girlie men." OK -- that was a reference to a comedy skit that parodied Arnold's body-building days -- but maybe it's a GOP reflex these days, too.
Then there's National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. She's fond of saying that the Bush Administration has implemented a "muscular" foreign policy. Not an intelligent foreign policy. Muscular: The president as Charles Atlas. Or Rambo, maybe.
Then there's Michael Savage, the far-right AM radio talk show host. He goes on a nightly rant against liberals -- whom he calls "the enemy within" -- and what he claims is the feminization of American culture.
To hear Savage tell it, national security is at risk because too many men are paying too much attention to their feelings, their feminine side, whatever exactly that means.
If you're up past midnight, and want a taste of really far-right thinking (but not too far right for The Journal Company's flagship radio station, WTMJ-AM 620), give "The Savage Nation" a listen. It begins with machine gun fire and explosion sound effects. "Savage!" an announcer intones between segments, conjuring up what? Warriors sitting around the fire, eating mastodon?
Savage, whose real last name is Weiner, probably thought the show would not be macho enough if it were called "Weiner Nation," (apologizes to people named Weiner -- it's a fine name), so "The Savage Nation" it is.
Our local radio talkers, who have pushed the Grothmann candidacy and trashed Panzer, want you to believe that they are tough guys, too.
In a recent "Sykes Writes" Web site posting, mocking John Edwards' "two-Americas" theme, WTMJ-AM morning host Charlie Sykes came up with his own two-Americas list, including bits like "One America does Pilates to keep fit. The other does yard work." You get the picture.
Commenting on Panzer's failure in a separate piece, Sykes wrote:
"Panzer has no plan and no votes. Not surprisingly, it ends in tears." Nice.
Mark Belling, the afternoon host on 1130 WISN-AM, and not to be outdone by the likes of Sykes, wrote in a recent Waukesha Freeman column that moderates like Panzer have a hard time translating rhetoric into action because they "they get the willies."
Not real men, Belling wrote: "Guys like Grothmann, an ideologically committed member of the State Assembly, have had enough."
So this Panzer take-out is a guy thing. Muscular. Come September, we'll see if moderate Republican women are allowed to hold power, or whether West Bend gets annexed to The Savage Nation.
James Rowen is a Milwaukee writer and consultant who worked for the Norquist administration.
