Wisconsin: Tammy Baldwin Runs Straight at the Tea Party (Music to my ears)

http://www.nationalmemo.com/article/tammy-baldwin-runs-straight-tea-party

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Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin wants to be the first openly gay candidate elected to the United States Senate. In an exclusive interview with The National Memo over the weekend, she made clear how she means to go about doing it: running straight at the Tea Party.

Suggesting the GOP will face an historic rebuke in the 2012 elections just two years after Tea Party activists helped to sweep it into power, Baldwin pinned her candidacy on the two pillars of the modern progressive movement that have both faced concerted assaults from newly-elected Midwestern governors in the past year: strong unions and a robust welfare state.

"I can promise you 2012 is a very different election year," she said Saturday. "When [Governor] Scott Walker and [Congressman] Paul Ryan started to attack everything we hold dear as Wisconsinites, our rich progressive history, our belief in a strong retirement, people in Wisconsin stood up and became organized and engaged." Walker led a successful effort to eliminate most collective bargaining rights for public employees and Ryan's Medicare privatization scheme passed in the U.S. House only to die in the Senate last year.

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Damn right Tammy, fight back from the left, and you will win!


"Democrats moving to the middle is a double disaster that alienates the party's progressive base while simultaneously sending a message to swing voters that the other side is where the good ideas are. It unconsciously locks in the notion that the other side's positions are worth moving toward, while your side's positions are the ones to move away from. Plus every time you move to the center, the right just moves further to the right."

---George Lakoff