The Liberty Tree Lantern

The Liberty Tree Lantern was informed yesterday afternoon by Vince Schmuki, a leader of Wisconsin Interests Now (W.I.N.), that the groups efforts to recall Governor Doyle have been halted.  Mr. Schumki cites serveral reasons for halting the recall:

1. We miscalculated on the last possible starting date. This is either a four and a half or five and a half month process from start to finish based on whether there has to be a recall primary. CRG made this clear. We always based decisions on the shorter time frame because there was not a Mark Neumann in the race necessitating a primary. Now there is and that threw our calculations off. That puts the conclusion of this recall into Jan/Feb 2010 depending on a start date. We have always said, as a group, from the beginning, that this recall process cannot go beyond 2009 for obvious reasons. Once you dip into the 2010 election year it becomes obvious that we will have an impossible job selling a recall over the natural 2010 election cycle. I did not have this fact hit me until after our last meeting was over. It was and still is sobering.

2. We missed our best start opportunity to catch people at their zenith of anger. This was during the passage of the state budget. The anger and interest level has subsided now and hits to our web site show as much. Also, donation flow has dropped to nothing.    

3. We did not concentrate on organizing our S.E. quadrant of the state. It is simply a matter of too little too late to try to pull it together now. Tom Spear had said to me that it would take 6 weeks to turn our group into what it needs to be to organize our population base. Tom, a now retired professional organizer by vocation, is one of the most optimistic people in this recall effort. I take great stock of what he says.

4. I believe that a miserably failed recall will be a bigger disaster for the conservative movement than no recall at all. I originally thought that if we failed we would not have to reveal the numbers to the press but now I realize that the final tally would be impossible to contain given the number of people that would be in the know. We would become a laughing stock to the left AND THE RIGHT. The press already smells blood and have started to call me about the viability of the 6000 member database that we have. I couldn’t answer the question to the WI State Journal because we have no real knowledge. Again, we have never had the time or enough people in the core group to do a full scale evaluation of the database.

A badly failed recall would give the opposition great  reason to ridicule us. It would also leave the impression that there is little opposition to Doyle -a message that WIN does not want to and cannot propagate.

Lastly, time has always been our enemy but keep in mind that in this short time we have achieved an amazing feat and all is not lost, far from it. WIN can go still go forward with our head held high. Without major money, press or endorsements we did what everyone, on both sides of the aisle, said couldn’t be done. What ACORN does with hordes of our hard earned tax money we did on a dime. We organized and became the voice for thousands of WI residents who wanted a say in the political process.

Further, we all know getting a good guy in as Gov. is not enough because we would then have a Walker/Milwaukee County Board gridlock situation repeated all over again. We must remove bad small-time players and get nomination papers circulated for good conservative candidates who can replace them and help out a conservative Governor. We have been in the past and can still be a force for change in our state in 2010.

We can still have a long lasting positive impact for the betterment of our state if we learn from our mistakes, refocus and move on to the next citizen effort. I hope that you will join in the vision and  understand.

- -  Vince Schmuki/ Representing WIN-Wisconsinites Interest Now