Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), poised to become the new Gov. Ultrasound, recently appointed a college student to the state university system's board of regents, which ordinarily wouldn't be especially interesting.
Except, in this case, Walker withdrew the appointment soon after making it -- and that's proving to be quite interesting, indeed.
Gov. Scott Walker has withdrawn his appointment of a University of Wisconsin-Platteville student to the UW System's Board of Regents -- a student who signed a petition seeking to remove the governor from office in a recall two years ago."His nomination has been withdrawn," Walker's press secretary Tom Evenson confirmed Thursday morning. Evenson did not immediately respond to questions about the reason for the withdrawal.
It was just Monday when the Republican governor named Joshua Inglett to the UW System Board of Regents, saying in a statement, "I know he will serve the UW System and his fellow students well." And by all appearances, that confidence made a lot of sense -- Inglett is a good student, studying engineering physics at UW-Platteville, and has served as a resident assistant in a dormitory.
But a few days later, the governor's office discovered that the student had signed an anti-Walker recall petition two years ago. All of a sudden, the invitation was revoked.
I suppose it's possible that Walker had some other hidden reason for rescinding the invitation a few days after announcing it, but on the surface, it certainly looks like the governor is keeping an enemies list
State Sen. Fred Risser (D) told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "If signing a recall petition disqualifies a person, that means a million citizens are no longer eligible for public service in this administration. Risser added that the Republican governor has created the "most partisan government we've ever had in my experience."
The irony is, conservatives, including prominent members of Congress, are constantly complaining that President Obama maintains some sort of enemies list, but Obama's the one who keeps appointing Republicans to key positions in his administration. James Comey worked in the Bush/Cheney administration and donated to McCain '08 and Romney '12 -- and the president just nominated him to lead the FBI.
If Republicans want to talk about politicians with enemies lists, they appear to be looking at the wrong chief executive.
As for Walker, his state economy is in very rough shape, and it's getting worse. Perhaps now would be a good time to focus less on medically unnecessary ultrasounds and enemies lists, and more on the fact that Wisconsin ranks 49th out of 50 states in economic outlook.