Walker & Co. minimize own scapegoat for fake problem

• Walker's legislators have invented the notion that the legislative process has slowed down.
• Walker's legislators identify the current recall situation as scapegoat.
• Walker claims the public doesn't care about recalls

In the news: Republicans in Legislature may try to make recalls harder 

[Republican lawmakers] said the [recall] situation has already slowed down the legislative process as senators fight recalls and some members of the Assembly run for Senate seats.
...
Darling, herself a subject of a recall, and Fitzgerald said legislation to speed environmental reviews of a proposed iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin was never introduced, in part, because lawmakers didn't have enough time to study it before the budget passed.
...
In an interview after an appearance in Washington, Walker responded to questions about the recalls and said they represented a political challenge for his party.

But the public isn't interested, he said.

"People are ready to move on," Walker said after appearing with several other governors at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  "And I don't just mean one party or another.  I think just in general.  The average citizen in Wisconsin I talk to.  it's like they've had it .... They want us to be talking about jobs.  They want us to be focused on that .... And so having another political campaign - it's going to happen, it's not like they can avoid it.  But it's not something they're particularly interested in."

Hypothesis: The lack of time to address northern Wisconsin mining before the budget passed was due to the Fitzgerald brothers' expediting, of the budget session, as if a gun were trained on them.

Following the budget's speedy passage through the legislature, Vos, Darling, and Jeff Fitzgerald have constructed the false notion of a sluggish legislature so that they can assign "recall" as its scapegoat.

Walker & Co. are trying to pit the recall movement against the supporters of mining.

However, Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca possesses common sense: "From a political standpoint, it looks like politicians trying to avoid accountability."

To round out the contentious contradictions, Walker minimizes the overall influence of recalls while encouraging the perception of recalls as a destructive influence.

Future work: Mining Company says project on hold until Legislature changes law
Herein lies another carefully constructed polarization.  While approval-by-default may appeal to a small government ideology, denial-by-default seems to be the more conservative strategy.  Are Walker & Co. pitting small government Republicans against traditionally conservative Republicans?

Fun with resources:

• Wisconsin State Representative Mark Pocan: Why Republican's are fast-tracking Wisconsin's budget
  Excerpt: [Debating the budget in extraordinary session] allows them to have things go back very quickly, between the two houses, with very little public disclosure.  They can limit debate.  They can limit the number of amendments we have.  They can really limit democracy quite a bit by having an extraordinary session
  ...
  [extraordinary session] really takes away the rights of the minority (the Democrats) and it takes away the rights of the public to know what's going on.
• State of Wisconsin Assembly Calendar, June 2011 Extraordinary Session
• GOP plans to add bargaining limits to budget if court doesn't act by Tuesday
  Excerpt:  Lawmakers plan to debate the budget in an "extraordinary" rather than a regular session, which allows the majority party to make changes quickly to the schedule, give shorter notice for committee meetings and limit stalling maneuvers by the minority party that can extend the process. 
  
  "We feel like we are under the gun," said Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau.  "We need to get this done." 
  
  But Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, said Republicans were misusing the process.  "Time is not a major concern right now," he said.  "Why would you want to truncate the process?"
• Update: James Rowen's perspective at the Political Environment
  The Political Environment: Mining Bill Did Not Hit Political Paydirt