Political Football

Tommy Thompson came back to Muscatine to speak to a crowd of about 45 at the Button Factory this AM. Click here to read about Tommy Thompson’s January Visit to Muscatine. Read about today’s visit below.

I do like his energy, and he knows he has to win in Iowa (he said Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois) to get the national attention he needs to continue. I also like what he had to say.

In January he was squishy on the proposed (at that time) surge and I didn’t like the fact that he didn’t seem (my impression) to even support the war effort. Today he had an only slightly different tact and it made sense.

1) Have the Iraqis vote to discover what our involvement should be (stay, limited, go). That would give us a powerful mandate.

2) Encourage the Iraqis to develop state-like governments, he said there were 18 of them today in Iraq (more useful IMO than the 3 country or region separation).

But Tommy’s best stories remain related to welfare and health care. He has a lot of executive experiences and success in Wisconsin, and he takes credit for the national welfare reform in the mid 90’s – he’s got a right to take some credit there.

I loved him talking about taking jobs from Illinois after the former Governor Jim Thompson of Illinois took jobs from an overtaxed Wisconsin – the Billboard war. At the state’s border Jim Thompson put up a billboard leaving Illinois “when you get tired of paying all those taxes in Wisconsin, Governor Thompson would invite you to move to Illinois” When Tommy took office, he lowered taxes and had an identical billboard saying the same thing about Governor Thompson wanting them to now move to Wisconsin — the other Governor Thompson.

(sad/funny thing is both of those states with Democrat leadership are taxing their citizens terribly; and Iowa is soon to follow suit – we MUST elect more Republicans to the Legislative and Executive branches of government to stop this madness)