“We see a similarity between the way people reacted to Gov. [Scott] Walker and the way people are reacting to President Trump,” said Wisconsin state Sen. Leah Vukmir, running now in the GOP primary to challenge Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Vukmir was in her first term as a state senator in 2011 when pro-union protesters stormed Madison, an experience she believes left her battle-hardened and ready to fight for a conservative agenda in Washington. But in reflecting on the chaos, which first erupted amid Walker’s Act 10 budget proposal and continued through the attempt to recall him in 2012, Vukmir thinks history suggests the efforts of Trump’s detractors may ultimately end up backfiring.
In a Monday interview with the Washington Examiner, I asked Vukmir to recall one lesson she learned about the progressive Left from the protests and the recall that would help her in a head-to-head contest with Baldwin.
“They don’t give up,” she said. “They fight very hard. They’re very vigilant.”
“But,” Vukmir added, “I also believed they crossed the line. I fully support people having their right to free speech, but there were moments and things that happened in the Capitol and around the Capitol that somewhat crossed the line, that individuals were threatened not only with verbal threats but with physical threats.”
In the end, Walker’s legislation passed, he easily survived the recall, and was able to secure re-election in 2014.
There’s something to be said for that, according to Vukmir.
“I think in the end that hurt their movement and caused people to say, ‘enough is enough, you’ve crossed the line,’ and I believe that there is that same potential happening at the national level,” she argued, drawing a parallel between the anti-Walker and Resistance movements.
Baldwin is one of the upper chamber Democrats seeking re-election in a state Trump won who actually voted for the government shutdown last month. Others, like Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Joe Donelly, D-Ind., ostensibly felt the shutdown hurt their re-election prospects more than it helped.
This is a critical calculation for Democrats: Get too close to the Resistance and you risk alienating voters in key red-state match-ups; stay too distant and you risk alienating your own base, depressing turnout, and inflaming internal tensions.
Vukmir thinks extremism in both the anti-Walker and anti-Trump movements is a turnoff at the ballot box.
“It backfired in Wisconsin and I think it has potential to backfire at the national level too, as people see such extreme positions and extreme reactions to the president and to those who are supporting his agenda,” she predicted.
