Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will see rain, and perhaps some snow, with a high of 38. Sunrise is 6:59 AM and sunset 7:05 PM for 12h 05m 49s of daytime. The moon is full with 100% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1865, the Congress of the Confederate States adjourns for the last time.
Molly Beck reports Robin Vos’ statement on voter fraud emboldens Wisconsin election deniers without delivering the ‘decertification’ they seek:
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos left a state Capitol meeting with Republicans seeking to decertify the 2020 election and declared, again, that what they wanted from him wasn’t possible.
But the group said they left Madison with hope for their efforts because of what he said next to reporters: “I think there was widespread fraud.”
Vos’ words emboldened proponents of the unsupported narrative that systemic fraud affected Wisconsin’s election outcome and played into a Republican Party talking point nationally.
“He has never said these words before,” Jefferson Davis, a former Menomonee Falls village president who met with Vos at the Capitol, told a crowd gathered in Plover Wednesday night to rally for the impossible and illegal idea. “So we got the needle to move from here to here.”
Audio of his comments were played over booming speakers in a blacktop parking lot off I-39 in Portage County as a couple hundred people cheered while Vos was across the street meeting with county party leaders to manage their views on the same idea.
“I think he is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and this is one of the dumbest things he has ever said,” Democratic Gov. Tony Evers said Thursday.
“That’s not leadership. We want people to vote. We want eligible people to vote. We want to make it as easy as possible. But when we continue to ratchet up the narrative that there was widespread fraud … that’s wrong. And that’s a leader saying that.”
[More:‘Chasing ghosts’: Election officials debunk false voting claims made to Wisconsin lawmakers]
Vos did not respond to requests for an interview on Thursday.
Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor and director of the university’s Elections Research Center, said Vos’ statement will make it even more difficult to assuage concerns within his party over the 2020 election.
(It’s hard to believe that Evers truly thinks that Vos is one of the smartest people he’s met, as Evers has met well more than six or seven people in his life.)
What’s easy to believe, because it’s obvious, is that Vos is a small, scared man. In the presence of the mob, Vos squeals in agreement and scurries away soaked in his own sweat and urine.
Behold, Wisconsin: there goes your Speaker of the Assembly.