Where is Dave Westlake's amicus brief?

Feingold has been a principled Bill of Rights proponent for years.

This video released last week features Dave Westlake saying he learned to "shoot a gun before learning how to ride a bike," "children going to hunter's safety classes have been demonized," and finally "our Second Amendment rights have been eroded." Westlake then rapidly fires seven rounds from a pistol before eying up the camera.

Except Russ Feingold is just a bit ahead of Westlake's curve. So where is Dave Westlake's U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief and what, exactly, is the point of his "blaze orange" campaign?

Maybe Dave Westlake would be better off defending warrantless wiretaps on Fourth Amendment grounds, or detailing how money is speech and corporations are persons for First Amendment purposes.

Because if the Second Amendment is Dave Westlake's signature issue, then he should probably vote for Russ Feingold himself.

Dave Westlake seizes the Tea

Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Dave Westlake leaped into the breech Wednesday, understudying for his missing GOP primary election rival Ron Johnson at a Tea Party affair in Madison, WI.

Westlake stressed his hard-right credentials by calling for the repeal of the Patriot Act, a position staked out by Russ Feingold in 2001.

(Dave Westlake's "blaze orange" campaign theme also appropriates Senator Feingold's position with respect to the Second Amendment, which is slightly to the right of the National Rifle Association's.)

Ron Johnson had canceled the Madison Tea Party engagement after disappearing earlier in the week when a set of YouTubes emerged showing Johnson struggling defensively to explain fundamental policy perspectives to a local group called the Rock River Patriots.

Candidate Johnson, 55, admitted to the Patriots he'd only been through the U.S. Constitution "five or six times" and that he discovered it to be "not an easy document to read." Yet almost simultaneously, he assured them he'd "take to Washington a very deep reverence for the genius of the Founding Fathers."

But the Patriots were skeptical.

Westlake is one of two Republican candidates whose election posters were torn down from the wall by Ron Johnson and his posse at the Party's State convention in Milwaukee last month, where Johnson received the Official Establishment Republican Party Endorsement.

At the time, nobody knew anything about Johnson except that he reportedly had $10-$15 million to spend and his "foundational book" was Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged (not — oddly — the Bible).

Whereas Dave Westlake had been campaigning assiduously for months, and must have chafed at seeing his poster crumpled and discarded so that Johnson might have a blank wall to stand in front of for the teevee cameras.

Johnson said he decided to run when beloved Fox "News" personality Dick Morris put out a random call for "some rich guy in Wisconsin."

Meanwhile abortion outfit Wisconsin Right to Life endorsed Ron Johnson yesterday, despite Johnson's consent to a broad range of exceptions for the procedure, including the "true life" of the mother. Candidate Westlake said he would allow for no such exceptions.

WRtL determined that Johnson was the more "electable" candidate, proving the abortion opponents' devotion to situational morality. Moreover, situational morality in service of political expediency.

On principle, WRtL's embracing Westlake seems the correct choice.

Ron Johnson remains in hiding, assessing his troubled candidacy.

Dave Westlake: This week in Bible physics

Tea Party favorite Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Dave Westlake finally emerged from contemplative seclusion yesterday, and he's reportedly going for the wing-nut gusto:

When asked if the Earth was around 6,000 years old, as some creationists believe, Westlake said, "That's probably a general timeline. There are very solid supporting evidence [sic] out there, or data out there, that shows that it's very reasonable to expect that it's not nearly as old as science says it is."

Let's have it then.

Earlier, Westlake had been endorsed by Joe the Plumber. One of Westlake's former rivals, Terrence Wall, caused havoc in February when he told a fundamentalist Christian teevee station the Universe was "billions of years" old. Mr. Wall received an irate telephone call.

He was eventually forced to withdraw from the race. Westlake battles Ron "Sunspots" Johnson in the September 14 Wisconsin primaries.

Ron Johnson's own special scientific theories received emphatic support through a letter to the editor published in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel last Tuesday from one Nils-Axel Morner, who "claims to be an expert in 'dowsing,' the practice of finding water, metals, gemstones etc. through the use of a Y-shaped twig."

As Noah of Ark fame said to the Argentinosauruses, "Oy vey iz mir."

Johnson misrepresents Feingold Senate vote

Being the first of many misrespresentations to come, undoubtedly.

Not so long ago, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Dave Westlake served as last-minute understudy for missing GOP rival Ron Johnson at a Madison, Wisconsin Tea Party affair.

Johnson disappeared after his notoriously "disastrous" performance last week, a YouTubed excursion to a deep woods Patriot clubhouse where Johnson dismayed Tea Party sympathizers not only with his inability to address specific Tea concerns, but with his failure to even recognize their most cherished constitutional ideals.

Some were led to wonder: Was he Tea or wasn't he GOP?

Yesterday morning Johnson emerged in the affluent Milwaukee suburb of Brookfield presumably after days of relentless murder-boarding with his new internets research specialist to face Westlake and WisPolitics.com's intrepid presenter Steven Walters.*

U.S. legal system derived from Bible stories

Seizing another opportunity, Westlake went on Full Tea Mode in Brookfield, calling for the abolition of the federal Departments of Education and Energy along with the IRS. He announced that in every Biblical story, one "undeniably" finds a little bit of Constitution, some Declaration of Independence, and a treatise on patent and trademark prosecution, and that the Second Amendment "defines who we are."

He proclaimed the Federal Reserve "a consumer threat," denounced Obama for performing "nothing more than a shakedown" on British Petroleum yachtsman-in-chief Tony Hayward, whose industry's safety record Westlake deemed "impeccable," and demanded that obese, sedentary tobacco smokers accept responsibility for their own poor health and stop insisting everybody else pay to take care of them.

Westlake also spoke emotionally of values and morality and especially moral hazards (to wit, federal unemployment benefits extended for another week or two, and their resultant Devilish temptation of the beneficiary to remain unemployed in perpetuity, in accordance with Tea Party psychology and prophesy).

Mr. Ron Johnson was less than truthful

Candidate Johnson came armed with new quips researched and served up from the deep recesses of the Googles, including one about how Senator Russ Feingold "voted for funding a sanctuary cities [sic]." Which sounds a lot like, "Feingold voted directly in support of something having to do with funding whatever thing it is that makes a sanctuary city a sanctuary city," doesn't it?

Except Johnson's implication is just a bit wide of the mark. Last October, Feingold voted to table (kill) a one-liner nuisance amendment advanced by wingnut Republican Sens. David Vitter and James Inhofe to withhold funding from COPS, a program in place and duly appropriated for since 1994. COPS is devoted to assisting selected local law enforcement engaged in specialized challenges.

For example, combating the social blight and attendant crime of methamphetamine addiction in distressed communities where State or municipal resources are otherwise unavailable.

There wasn't any connection between any particular city's so-called sanctuary ordinance — which discourages municipal employees from participating in immigration investigations except where required by the law — and COPS. Save that connection fabricated inside the roiling medullae oblongatae of Messrs. Vitter and Inhofe.

In fact a number of Republicans joined Sen. Feingold in opposing Vitter and Inhofe's transparent, regressive grandstanding.

Johnson said of immigration, which he claimed "is one of the weakest issues [Feingold's] on," that Feingold "has a zero rating from a group that basically calls for open borders." But wouldn't that be a good thing? Perhaps it will take Johnson a few more days to properly digest all of that newly discovered internets research.

Elena Kagan already "probably disqualified"

In a similar vein, Johnson also asserted that Feingold "voted for partial birth abortion seven times." Obviously nobody votes for "partial birth abortion." But Russ Feingold has certainly voted against placing onerous federal restrictions on women's access to what is and has been for decades — whether Ron Johnson likes it or not — a legal and constitutionally protected right: "the settled law of the land."

Johnson's embedded accusation that supporters of abortion's safe and legal availability are by definition active proponents of infanticide may be the most disingenuous of conservative Republican fallacies.

Among other freshly released Johnson zingers, the candidate determined that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan** was "probably disqualified" for "actually den[ying] access to military recruiters at Harvard" (another falsehood) and that the very thought of Obama having the authority to appoint federal judges was "depressing."

And he repeated his nonsense about knee replacements in Canada, adding a new twist: that it's not unusual to wait one year to receive a coronary bypass in Germany, which sounds equally preposterous.

WisconsinEye supplies the video.

* Sample Walters inquiry: "Do you support President Obama's move to require BP to set up a $20 million [sic] trust fund for oil spill damage that came ahead of any formal finding of criminal or civil negligence?" Both candidates answered "No" based almost entirely on the response Walters had thoughtfully provided in the question.

** Said Dave Westlake of Elena Kagan: "I don't have a whole lot of confidence in nominee Kagan. She's never served in any capacity similar to what she'd be experiencing on the federal court." But neither has Westlake served in any capacity similar to what he'd be experiencing in the federal legislature. As such, not among the most compelling or tactical objections to Elena Kagan's qualifications.

Dave Westlake now defeated: Murdoch paper

That was quick.

The Wall Street Journal's September 15 issue hits the stands today

The Wall Street Journal's right-wing editorial pages have long been a leading expert source in Wisconsin judicial politics as well, predicting several years ago a terrifyingly Alabamian tsunami of product liability litigation in the Badger State which, uh, never actually happened.

Observers suggested the WSJ's mandarins may have mistaken video footage of Ron Johnson at the Republican Party convention last May for the September 14 primary. In the footage, a Johnson aide is shown tearing down a 'Dave Westlake for Senate' political free speech campaign poster while Johnson pulls down one of Terrence Wall's.

Johnson's campaign subsequently claimed the pair were rendering freelance janitorial services — just helping out with the tidying up.

A spokesperson confirmed no union jobs were displaced to Macau.

Since that time, Ron Johnson has been touring Wisconsin complaining that his own personal Freedoms are under government attack and that the Communist Chinese "climate for business investment is far more certain ... than it is in the U.S. here."

The Chairman of the Party Reince Priebus issued a decree that all discussion of Ron Johnson's bizarre proclamations must cease immediately [Need to clarify he is Republican Party chairman — ed.].

Earlier: Dave Westlake concedes solar system only 13 days young

Dave Westlake pounces in Polk County

Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?

DAVE WESTLAKE: I recognize the Constitution is the law of the land. It's not a difficult document to truly understand. [Ron Johnson] has said on multiple occasions that he's not a constitutional scholar and he's not qualified necessarily to make some interpretations of the Constitution.

Well, that's kind of the purpose of what you do in the Senate. You look at the law of the land and you make sure that everything that you do is within the Constitution, within the framework of the Constitution.

On the campaign trail with Dave Westlake

Wisconsin GOP primary getting mighty confusing

One candidate is referring to himself in the third person:

Dave Westlake said he has gotten pressure [from people within the Party] to drop out of the race so that Ron Johnson can cruise through the September primary. "They're a little less willing to go along with me, but there's not been an all-out push to have Dave Westlake drop out of the race," said Dave Westlake, "because they know that I'm not going to."

Another has either lost or gained a hotel room.

And: Terrence Wall grants another interview.

Concern troll GOP candidate is concerned

Butler's narrow defeat in his run for a full term on the court came after special interest groups poured millions of dollars into a sleazy and dishonest attack campaign that played on racial stereotypes and was condemned by Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives.

— The (Madison, WI) Capital Times

Dave Westlake, candidate for U.S. Senate from Watertown, announced today his concern regarding the nomination of former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler to the U.S. District Bench by Sens. Feingold and Kohl.

— Westlake campaign press release

First of all, Senators don't nominate federal judges, Presidents do. An aspirant to the U.S. Senate might want to check into that, just in case that's one of the imaginary powers he's seeking as a candidate.

Second, round about 20% of the State's registered voters turned out to do so on April 1, 2008. The other 80% are probably wondering how in the world they've been "disrespected." That is, if they even care.

Third, and most importantly, there is the brute fact that State elections have absolutely nothing to do with either the federal judicial nominating process or the qualifications of the nominees.

And rightly so. It was never intended to be a popularity contest.

Bewitched, bothered, and a little insulted

The Republican candidate Dave Westlake said he was "surprised," "puzzled," and a "little insulted" by the nomination, citing Butler's narrow electoral loss to a person, Michael Gableman, who is currently under investigation by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission for lying about Butler's record as a public defender two decades ago.

Nevertheless, apparently the foregoing "concern" has become the latest petulant conservative Republican fauxtrage du jour, spearheaded by F. James Sensenbrenner (R-West Bend G&CC), a member of the House of Representatives and as such having nothing whatsoever to do with either the nomination or confirmation process.

On cue, the utterly predictable right-wing "opinion makers" have since weighed in, including a reputed local university instructor in the finer points of journalistic ethics who, in concert with an outfit called the Coalition for America's Families, was personally (and professionally, assumedly) responsible for some of the most scurrilous and defamatory attacks against Justice Butler.

"Butler," that journalist opines today, "possesses a great deal of integrity." One needn't require any additional evidence that irony died a gasping and unceremonious death a long time ago.

For some people, at least.

But even assuming that State election results are somehow at all relevant to the Article III judiciary, consider the following.

Eleventy thousand uncontested guilty pleas

The Western District of Wisconsin, the federal jurisdiction Louis Butler has been nominated to, is comprised of 44 of the State's 72 counties and in fact Butler won the aggregate vote there by a margin (53% to 47%) greater than was Gableman's statewide.

Within the Western District of Wisconsin, Louis Butler prevailed in five of the eight most populous counties, including the most populous one — Dane County — where the federal court is situated, and where he received more than 72% of the votes cast.

Additionally Butler even won Ashland County, where Gableman prosecuted the "war on crime" as district attorney and presumably where they might well have known Gableman the best.

True, Gableman strutted away with the prize in Burnett County (pop. 16,196) at least partly on the strength of the fact that not one of the 9,000 uncontested traffic tickets over which he presided there as a circuit judge was ever petitioned before any courts of appeal.*

So, yeah, according to Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-Concours Motors) et al's own reasoning, Wisconsin voters did indeed choose Louis Butler for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.

Most of Gableman's 2008 electoral patrons live in the remaining 28 of 72 counties within the Eastern District, a separate federal jurisdiction, so none of them has anything to worry about anyway.

They might just as effectively complain about Obama's nomination of Abdul K. Kallon to the Northern District of Alabama.**

* Lest anybody thinks that I'm making this up or kidding around, that was an actual claim made by Michael Gableman and his delightfully urbane campaign manager, Mr. Darrin Schmitz. Seriously.

** Come to think of it, they probably will.

Why is WRtL salivating over Ron Johnson?

Because as One Wisconsin Now points out, Johnson's Republican foe Dave Westlake is the one with the "no exceptions" abortion position.

Dave Westlake knows there simply aren't enough victims of violent sexual assaults to justify their access to safe, legal medical care.

Call WRtL and tell them to stand up like James Dobson.

Earlier: Ron Johnson would allow abortions

Joe the Plumber in betrayal of actual plumber

Item: Dave Westlake scores key Wurzelbacher endorsement

Isn't Mr. Wurzelbacher aware there's a real plumber in the race?

After graduating from Milwaukee Trade and Technical High School in 1984, I got a job driving a truck for a plumbing company. I got my apprenticeship, earned my journeyman's license and eventually earned my Master's Plumbing license. I've worked in the construction trade my whole life.

— Stephen M. Finn for United States Senate

Speaking as a sometime UA brother, I like that guy already.

On teh web: Dave Westlake.

Capital Times endorses Dave Westlake

He's the one with no money:

The grass-roots conservative was accorded little respect at the convention of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which was wired to provide an endorsement for millionaire candidate Ron Johnson.

That's more than a little concern-trolling at work there.

"Millionaire candidate" being the emerging theme, and not a complimentary one.* Of course both parties and their sympathizers have a tradition of supporting the other side's underdog because if he's the nominee, he stands a better chance of getting beaten. So cynicism precludes taking too seriously the (staunchly liberal) Capital Times's noble paeans to democracy. In this case, at least.

* On the other hand, it was Ron Johnson himself who acknowledged the "moment" he decided to run was when Fox News fixture Dick Morris put the invitation out for some "rich guy in Wisconsin."

Postscript: I mean, if even bona fide Dave Westlake backers don't take you seriously, then what's the point:

Progressives have decided to embrace the vision of Karl Marx, Engels, Trotsky, Stalin, and Mao. The Founding Fathers' vision was one of individualism, liberty, prosperity, and life. Progressives' vision is one of control, collectivism, equal poverty (unless you rule) and for those who refuse — death.

Jesus, man, step away from the Glenn Beck.

Tea candidate foments unrest over D.C. usurper

Dave Westlake, a Republican running for Senate who identifies closely with the tea party movement, said [former G.W. Bush cabinet secretary Tommy] Thompson shouldn’t be using the rally to make his [non-]announcement.

"He’s using a platform that’s supposed to be about rallying around a common cause to reduce the size of government, to lower spending and lower taxes and he’s using it for his own personal announcement," Westlake said. "He’s not the tea party movement. He’s a big spender and did a lot of things that was the antithesis of what people in the tea party want."

Why can't we all just get along?

Earlier: Westlake empties a clip into a stand of magic mushrooms

Feingold opponent will debate self

At 10:15 am, Dave Westlake, candidate for the U.S. Senate, will be introduced. His Republican challenger, Terrence Wall, is unable to attend. Westlake will participate and face questions from the moderators.

What, no Richard Leinenkugel either?

WisDems take aim at guy who isn't running

24/7/365 campaign cycle broaches Fourth Dimension

Video via Cory Liebmann.

Republicans will say, 'This proves beyond any doubt that Russ Feingold is running scared from Tommy Thompson.' But I don't know about that. Thompson, despite his legendary profile in Wisconsin, is laden with baggage, much of which he's collected since he left the State (literally and figuratively: most significantly, the latter) to saddle up with the fondly remembered G.W. Bush administration.

For example, Secretary of Health and Human Services Thompson was cited by the Union of Concerned Scientists for rejecting a nominee — a Nobel recipient — to a department position because physiologist Torsten Wiesel had signed letters to the editor critical of Bush. (And as conservative Republicans teach nowadays, criticizing the President of the United States, well, that just isn't done in polite society.)

On the other hand it's not completely unreasonable that an individual of Tommy Thompson's entrenched position has long since lost count of how many corporations he's been serving in Washington, D.C.

Wait ... no, that's the same hand.

Feingold has been taunting Thompson ever since the "nonpartisan" (spare me) Wisconsin Policy Research Institute released "polling data" showing Feingold trailing significantly in a hypothetical match-up. WPRI, whose principals are closely connected to Thompson's career and fortunes, could scarcely contain its glee, and issued a statement for which they were "scolded" by UW Prof. Ken Goldstein, the academic-on-contract who'd collected the underlying numbers.

Comes now the result of a Rasmussen tally, showing Thompson and Feingold in a dead heat. Further, adjusting for Rasmussen's demonstrated historical propensity to skew conservative and Republican, that makes Feingold actually a polling favorite to beat not only Thompson, but also Feingold's two current (allegedly) non-hypothetical challengers Terrence Wall and Dave Westlake.

Thompson "hasn't ruled out" — as the saying goes — challenging Feingold so the WisDems campaign isn't so much one of fear but rather simply preparedness. Besides, they've got money to spend (good for the economy) and since neither T. Wall nor D. Westlake are serious candidates, they've got to spend it on something.

Ron Johnson alleges "dubious premises"

Here's Fox News/Republican/Tea candidate Ron Johnson's latest Fisk-begging statement to the press:

This [federal] grant was secured in March of 1979 by Wisconsin Industrial Shipping Supplies ...

WKOW's report mentioned that, so it's not dubious, it's affirmed.

... in exchange for a substantial business investment for the City of Oshkosh.

"For" the City of Oshkosh. Clever.

But that's generally the way these things work, isn't it? The federal grant to build a spur from the (Canadian-owned) Soo Line is on the larger view an investment in the local economy, based on a presumption that the grantee will prosper and her prosperity will in turn attract more business to the community. Econ 101, I reckon.

And Ron Johnson is coming dangerously close to suggesting the rail spur was somehow a burden on his business, an act of purest civic martyrdom, a sacrifice he endured "for" the City of Oshkosh. Absurd.

A rail siding is a great benefit to a shipper especially. You can fit more stuff on a rail car, and it's cheaper than trucking.* Plus you don't have to warehouse the finished product, you just stick it on the rail car and keep filling it up the next shift. There's nothing like a rail siding run right into your building, particularly a free gummint one.

You know what this rail siding is? Stimulus, which Ron Johnson rails against, and is currently spending much of his life attacking Russ Feingold for supporting similar initiatives all over the country and especially in Wisconsin. So how come it's good for Ron Johnson but it's an assault on Ron Johnson's Freedoms when it's for anybody else?

Ron Johnson moved to Wisconsin in June of 1979 and started Pacur, which has become a true Wisconsin success story.

Nobody, I expect, disputes the latter, although it is less of a premise than a conclusion with at least one missing premise. Dubious.

Gummint

Yet first Ron Johnson affirms he signed on only a couple of months after the grant was "secured" — it's not clear which moment in the procedure that refers to; it might be any one of several — whereas WKOW had simply said "months." Where's the "dubious premise" there; I don't see it. One could easily have read it as October.

You can take a look at the rail spur on teh Google maps. If it was "secured" in March, it sure wasn't completed by June. They had 12 months to build it and if Ron Johnson is so adamantly opposed to these sort of government handouts, then he should have stopped it, as he was in control of his company since "day one" In June, 1979.

But of course he didn't stop it. It's a pretty sweet deal. And there seems little question the rail siding benefited Johnson's company financially. That's likely even quantifiable, but we can leave that exercise to Ron Johnson, as he's the one with the accounting degree.

Nonetheless, these allegations from WKOW are based entirely on dubious premises.

All premissary dubiousness is to Johnson's account. He is the one yelling at Tea Parties — 'Leave us conservatives alone!' — and elsewhere about the evil gummint and now here he is running a business with a free rail siding, courtesy the federal government.

And $4M in state-facilitated loans at up to 2-1/2 points below market interest rates. Why shouldn't somebody else accrue such benefits similarly? That's the question Ron Johnson needs to answer now.

Randian

If your own premises are that government grants and subsidies to business are unwanted and unneeded and indeed, a malicious affront to the hallowed Randian dystopia, then you render those premises dubious when you lobby for and accept so much of them.

How is that not outright hypocrisy, or outright lying,** given Ron Johnson's prior claims about subsidies and stimulus packages?

We have highways, railroads, post offices, water and electrical services among other public services that businesses rely on each day.

Now he sounds like a liberal defending Feingold's vote on the stimulus package. Who knows what Ron Johnson will come up with tomorrow.

It's not any "dubious premises" Ron Johnson objects to, it's the fact that he got himself rather amusingly busted by inquisitive reporters.

Again.

In the meantime, where is Dave Westlake? Westlake has economic principles too, but he doesn't appear to have betrayed any of them. Republican primary voters, who go to the polls here in about two weeks, should take another look at him, as I understand they're in the market for someone who can actually beat Feingold in November.

* More so when you've got your own rail siding.

** Not to worry. It's most likely protected political speech in Wisconsin (pending a successful motion for summary judgment).

eta: More observations from the always astute Chief of Oshkosh.
[Welcome WisOpinion readers. They won't link to him but I will.]

Feingold in "deep trouble"

Salivates Fred Barnes in Bill Kristol's organ, the Weekly Standard:

Republican businessman Ron Johnson is two points behind (Rasmussen) Democratic Senator Russ Feingold. The tightness of these contests is especially worrisome to Democrats because once seemingly safe incumbents are now in deep trouble.

Rasmussen's is so far the only poll available for the Feingold/Johnson matchup. Nobody's ever heard of Ron Johnson. He has no platform other than "Obamacare is an assault on our Freedoms," whatever that's supposed to mean, and he's pledged to repeal it as his Senate Job One, which is akin to a hellbound snowball's entreaties.

He appeared on Fox & Friends (literally, his most appropriate venue) yesterday to mouth the identical vacuous Tea Party platitudes that WISN-TV's Mike Gousha subtly undermined over the weekend.

And he unreservedly commends Russ Feingold's opposition to one of the most significant and costly pieces of legislation forged by the 111th Congress, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

If the theory is that Wisconsin voters will choose anybody — even an unknown — over the incumbent Feingold, then why did the same pollster show Feingold trouncing the other competing Republican hopefuls Terrence Wall (since withdrawn) and Dave Westlake?

Expect Rasmussen Reports' tiny sample size/wide margin of error* science to achieve outlier status in a hurry, just as several of Rasmussen's other U.S. Senate polls already have.

And somebody please hand Fred Barnes a tissue. Or a box of them, just in case Johnson gets an opportunity to debate Feingold.

Johnson's sense of civic and political responsibility is certainly admirable, but he better start boning up on some substance.

Further reading.

* According to which Johnson is actually leading Feingold.

Wisconsin Tea candidate wants feds out of his life

Invisible hand of market revealed to be Obama's

The firm had a line of credit based on a federal Small Business Administration loan, and Tea-Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Dave Westlake's salary came from this line of credit.

Plaintiff in civil suit maintains he is a gruntled former colleague

George Will's man love letter to Ron Johnson

Sheesh, get a room already:

Ron Johnson ... now is ablaze, in an understated, Upper Midwestern way. This 55-year-old manufacturer of plastic products from Oshkosh, Wis., is what the Tea Party looks like. He is trim, gray-haired and suddenly gray-suited. For years he has worn jeans and running shoes to his office, but now, under spousal duress, he is trying to look senatorial — "My wife upgraded me to brown shoes."

Ron Johnson tells the poor man's Roger Angell his "foundational book" is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which is not the Foundational Book you'd expect out of a pro-life Lutheran hailing from the Wisconsin heartland. Or is it. What the hell, there was no commandment about naked political pandering (even Noah of West Bend public school board fame did a little naked pandering, come to think of it).

And Johnson thinks the tome — whose author's opinion of religion makes PZ Myers look like Francis of Assisi — is "too short,"* which is actually a pretty great line. But he also thought Terrence Wall and Dave Westlake were a couple pages too long, so he tore their campaign posters down (which he now says reporters made him do).

Johnson may be even more entertaining than Rand Paul.

Asked how much of his wealth he will spend, if necessary, [Johnson's] answer is as simple as it is swift: "All of it."

Remember: No bailouts, no entitlements.

* Its relentless, one-note tedium exceeds 1,000 pages.

Ron Johnson secures another gummint loan

Four million cash money now, up from 2.5 million — AP

"Tax-free bonds allow a borrower to borrow at a lower rate," said Andrew Reschovsky, a professor of applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "That's a subsidy from normal borrowing."

Hell, even I coulda told ya that.

Where's Dave Westlake? He should be gorging himself on this stuff.

And they spilled their saliva on the ground

Wisconsin Right to Life is "salivating" (Blech) over Tea/Fox News/Republican candidate Ron Johnson. But why? Johnson supports abortion rights. Johnson's Republican rival, Dave Westlake, does not:

I believe that all human life is precious and is a blessing from the Lord. We are not the arbiters of when natural death occurs, and therefore I do not support abortion.

No "true life" exceptions for he.