Rational Wisconsinites - partisan or solidly independent but with a normal share of concern for their fellow citizens, neighborhoods and state - may be somewhere between baffled or outraged by the deadly paradox between the the state's overwhelmingly Republican legislature remaining on its nearly-six-month long paid vacation while a statewide COVID-19 virus epidemic
again overwhelms Wisconsin hospitals and drives the victim-counts near the top of the national tally:
Wisconsin Becomes Coronavirus Hotspot
The answer to the riddle is that to the Wisconsin's GOP legislators, inertia in the face of escalating disease and death is no contradiction at all.
It's the logical outcome of Ronald Reagan's sloppy 'government is not the solution to our to problems, it IS the problem,' slogan and Grover Norquist's even more contemptible 'drown [government] in a bathtub' bumpersticker.
So better for the Republicans to obstruct or cut public funding and services as a routine whenever possible (with self-serving exceptions to be noted, below), because public servants agencies able to quickly a deal with a healthcare crisis just might also successfully add value for the people to school systems, environmental protection, justice agencies, policing and even the easier provision of health insurance and treatments to everyone.
To be fair, Wisconsin Republicans proved they could act with breakneck speed to boost the re-election chances of former Gov. Walker by shoveling billions of state and local taxpayer dollars to the Taiwan-based electronics giant Foxconn whose operations are centralized in China and India.
Three years later, Walker is out of office and not a single promised flat-screen device has been produced on the Racine County farm and wetlands which were bulldozed at the company's request.
The GOP Walkerites who ram-rodded through that historic taxpayer-dollar giveaway - along with special, fast-track access to state courts, suspension of environmental reviews and fresh, tazpayer-paid highway overbuilding - continue to excuse Foxconn's 'performance' and ignore Walker's promise that the project would create at least 13,000 high-paying blue collar jobs.
You can read a full, 40-month accounting of Foxconn matters - which is also a primer on the definition of Wisconsin Republican 'philosophy' - here.
Implemented by the same group of self-serving partisans who remain officially inert - but collecting full pay and benefits - while the killer COVID virus crisis is now sickening more than 120 new Wisconsin victims every hour:
Wisconsin reported a record high number of 2,887 new COVID-19 cases, the highest number of hospitalizations to-date and 21 more deaths on Thursday.
The latest numbers come just one day after the state set a grim record with 27 deaths reported Wednesday.
These 'do-all-harm' and manically-partisan Republicans prefer to continue marginalized the state's leading health manager by refusing to confirm her appointment while continuing to aid and abet allied litigants
hoping to undermine the still-acting health department secretary and further diminish Gov. Evers and his implementation of simple life-saving COVID-19 restraints, for two reasons:
1. Republicans prefer ineffective, even failing and harmful public policies to substantial and successful programs.
2. Because Evers had the temerity to send Walker packing, so the WI GOP simply extends its never-do-anything which might validate a Democratic Governor to do-nothing to save lives statewide - even in reliable red counties - because some random Democrats at the supermarket might inadvertently be saved from an infected cough by a 75-cent paper face mask.