After failing to overturn Pres. Biden's legitimate electoral college victory, Wisconsin's two newest and most ill-suited and ill-tempered Republican US House reps have turned their reflexive misogyny towards blocking Senate confirmation of former state Health and Human Services Department Secretary-designee Andrea Palm to a senior health policy position in the Biden administration.
I say "reflexive misogyny" after noting the difficulties some of Biden's female nominees have run into, but I am not overly worried about Republicans' fairness when it comes to matters of gender equity because they have noted expert on such matters Glenn Grothman always on call.
Note that The Washington Post finds validation in Palm's COVID19-mitigation work in Wisconsin which some of the most undistinguished of our state's GOP state congressional delegation continue to manipulate through distortion and smears.
How Wisconsin turned around its lagging vaccination program — and buoyed a Biden health pick
Andrea Palm, tapped as No. 2 at HHS, has been vilified by Wisconsin Republicans. But her state’s approach to covid-19 vaccination is working.
I doubt that WI GOP reps Scott Fitzgerald and Tom Tiffany
as low-ranking and low-wattage minority party members have the clout to sway a vote their way in the upper US Senate chamber.
Which helps explain why Tiffany's effort to scuttle the history-making appointment of a Native American Secretary of the Interior fell flat. And, again, Tiffany didn't want a former US Congresswoman in the position.
The Tiffany-Fitzgerald broadside against Palm effort is less a way to raise real concerns about her nomination and more about continuing the representatives' partisan attack on the way the Evers administration has handled the COVID19 pandemic despite partisan litigation, propaganda and politicking by Tiffany, Fitzgerald and other Wisconsin Republicans that continues to intentionally hamstring the Governor's public health obligations.
Regardless, Tiffany recently publicly advised his daughters against getting COVID19 vaccinations, while Fitzgerald said during the pandemic that people could choose if they wanted to abide by a statewide masking order, and campaigned without one - see Twitter, Oct. 17, 2020 - while the pandemic was raging.
Two more things about Tiffany and Fitzgerald's exceptionally snotty joint statement which produced coverage that reprised a classless bit of Tiffany's small-minded, state-level xenophobia:
"A native New Yorker, ally of Hillary Clinton's, and Washington, D.C. insider, Ms. Palm understands very little of our Midwestern values or how her decisions have devastated our way of life," he said in May.
"Native New Yorker."
Careful, there, bud. Mind your biases.
And I recall no such aversion to out-of-state hires in 2011 when Scott Walker brought in DC insider and former Bush administration official Dennis Smith from The Heritage Foundation to serve in the same post to which Evers had named 'native New Yorker' Palm.
And I'm sure Tiffany was really itching to say that Palm 'understands very little of our Wisconsin values,' but, alas, had to fall back on the more generic "Midwestern values" because he and Fitzgerald and other top Wisconsin Republicans cannot claim to be native Wisconsinites, or fully raised and dedicated here, e.g.
Walker is a Colorado native.
Ron Johnson is a Minnesotan.
Fitzgerald is an Illinois native.
And, like Johnson, Tiffany was born in Minnesota.
And I remind Tiffany, et al that vague terms 'Midwestern nice' have been coopted by people who may have become Midwestern without being nice.
RealClearPolitics today [3/28/18] lets "sleeper" candidate Walker, "a preacher's son," bask in being called "nice."
In a recent interview with conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Walker addressed those concerns. “Yeah, I’m nice. I’m midwestern nice. There’s no doubt about it,” he said.No doubt about it?
Let's take a closer look at the multiple groups and people Walker has disrespected: