Thread by @donmoyn

Robin Vos, one of the architects of the WI Power grab has an op-ed in @USAtoday justifying his actions. If you know the history of WI politics, its an incredibly disingenuous piece of propaganda. So here is some context...1/
eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/…

Vos’s main justification for stripping powers from Evers is that Evers hinted he might drop the Medicaid work requirement Scott Walker introduced and *did not campaign on it.*
So Vos is saying, if you didn't campaign on a policy, you shouldn't adopt it. 2/

The Medicaid work requirement is a big deal. Should have been more of a campaign issue. Vos is right there. However, Walker also did not want to talk much about it. He even pushed CMS to wait until after the election to approve the waiver. 3/
politico.com/story/2018/10/…

WI has historically given Governors wide latitude in using waivers for intergovernmental programs, esp. in healthcare. Having the legislature micro-manage the Governor's relationship with the feds is a break w tradition. 4/
academic.oup.com/jpart/article-…

So how did the candidates actually talk abt healthcare? Evers opposed the lawsuit that Walker joined to eliminate Obamacare. Evers promised to withdraw. Clear mandate he campaigned on. But Vos is blocking him from acting on that mandate. 5/
washingtonpost.com/opinions/wisco…

Walkers & Evers argued about pre-existing conditions. Walker justified his opposition to Obamacare by promising to pass a bill protecting pre-exisitng conditions. This was the *only* issue that in the extraordinary session anyone had campaigned on. Can you guess what happened? 6/

But the bigger picture in WI politics is that Vos has been perfectly happy to violate the principle (“don’t try to put in place big policy changes you did not campaign on”) he now uses to justify kneecapping Evers. In fact, its been a trademark the current WI GOP. 7/

Here is a partial list of the policies Vos has vigorously pursued that did not have a campaign mandate:
* Act 10
* weakening tenure & faculty governance
* eliminating an independent election board and replacing it with a group of partisans
* gutting state transparency rules 8/

Another trademark of Vos's legsislative style is to move as quickly as possible - release big policies on a Friday evening (preferably over a holiday weekend) or hide it in a budget bill. Eliminate public hearings. Ram the legislation through w an all night session if needs be 9/

All of these tactics were on full display in the extraordinary session, used to ram though policies - such as curbing early voting, and gutting the power of the Attorney General - that no-one had campaigned on and which Vos conveniently forgets to mention in his op-ed. 10/

Another word you won't find in Vos's op-ed is "gerrymander"

To conclude: the WI GOP have no popular mandate for what they did. Their effort to justify their actions using democratic norms not only do not hold up to scrutiny, they run contrary to what actually happened w the extraordinary session and what has happened in WI since 2010 12/

Remember that Robin Vos op-ed claiming that the #WIPowerGrab was motivated by post-election comments by Evers that he might withdraw from Medicaid work requirements?
New report shows that Vos had been working on the plan as far back as the *summer*? nytimes.com/2018/12/07/us/…