This crowd of Walkerites who run Wisconsin these days sure have a way with words. Their way? To twist them.
Novelist George Orwell predicted all this and now it's here. In his "1984," Orwell depicted a totalitarian society that said one thing to mean the exact opposite. Thus, for example, in the novel, the agency that waged war was called the Ministry of Peace.
Scott Walker's rather authoritarian if not totalitarian-minded government does the same thing, on its own, more puerile level.
When under the federal Affordable Health Care Act (which conservatives promptly labeled "Obamacare") states were required to devise ways to give consumers a one-stop exchange to compare insurance plans, Walker promptly created the "Office of Free Market Health Care."
The name ironically endorsed the Democratic (not just Obama) aim of using for-profit health insurers as a basis for improving delivery and cost. That's the very thing that Walker and his GOP pals claim wasn't happening because, in their oft-repeated cries, "Obamacare" is a government takeover. Which Walker and his pals promptly tried to simultaneously defeat and co-opt.
Ambiguity and uncertainty, thy name is Republicanism.
That's why Walker's "free market" health care office was really just a shell; just a slogan; a billboard; a Potemkin village. Never mind that it actually served to prove the point of Democrats and defuse the arguments of Republicans. Walker was having it both ways: Mess up health care reform, while pretending to be for health care reform.
When Walker finally had to choose between fact and fiction, he decided to send back $38 million in federal funds meant to be used by his so-named "free market" office. He also got the legislature to repeal the law that created the office, which never, as Blogging Blue discovered, did anything. See:
http://bloggingblue.com/2012/01/23/walker-throws-wisconsin-to-the-wolves/
Indeed, if you go visit the office's web site today, it's still -- as it always was -- "still under construction." See:
http://www.freemarkethealthcare.wi.gov/underconstruction.asp
Meanwhile, the Walker administration's actual approach to health care reform is, instead, still under DE-construction.
This kind of nonsensical rhetoric has become routine among Republicans, as when national GOP lawmakers led by Sen. Jim DeMint introduced a bill called the "Repeal the Jobs Killing Health Care Act." You see, it's not enough to call their measure a repeal. The name has got to pass through the GOP propaganda machine for ideological twinking, too.
Meanwhile, back home, Walker's new recall campaign theme apparently will be "Believe in Wisconsin." Apparently, "Stand with Scott" and "Open for Business" just don't resonate these days.
Unfortunately, the new slogan is just as ack-basswords as all things Walker. There ought to be a law forcing the often nation-trotting governor -- who is relying on out-of-state donors to fuel the defense of his seat -- to use his real approach to governing as a slogan. Then he'd have to go with: "Believe Outside Wisconsin."
The man, you see, just can't think outside the box.