Jay Weber Show transcript 3-7-23 6:40am
So-bottom line- poisonous Janet Protasiewicz has been offered-at least-ten opportunities to engage in debates with Daniel Kelly-and she has refused them all- save one.
News broke yesterday that channel 12 had invited both to do a televised interview. Kelly said yes, Janet said no.
Then...we learned that Protasiewicz has also refused to participate in debates that the Milwaukee press club and Marquette university wanted to hold.
Again, in those instances, Daniel Kelly accepted and Protasiewicz refused.
This list of her refusals sort of snowballed from there, until the Kelly campaign made it known that -oh- we have agreed to participate in more than ten debates. We’ve had more than ten offers-and no-jail Janet has refused to accept any of them.
Protasiewicz doesn’t want to talk about her political activism and the ‘thumb’ that she admits to putting on the scale. She doesn’t want to talk about her dog whistles to the left, promising to expand abortion, kill off act ten, redraw the election maps.
It's clear Protasiewicz doesn’t want to talk about any of this-and- her campaign managers don’t think that it is in her -interest-to talk about these things in any forum in which she could be challenged.
Right?
That is clearly what’s going on, here. It’s an old standard in politics that if you think you are ahead, you limit the number of debates. And if you are behind...you want to do as many of them as you can...to draw the contrast with your challenger and hope to get them to slip up.
We all understand this-but- any normal standard here, based on past supreme court races-would be that ...the underdog wants to do 20...and the frontrunner agrees to do. Oh...four.
Protasiewicz, until yesterday, refused to do even one. She and her team were hoping to avoid- any debate- between now and April fourth...because this woman cannot defend her naked activism and hyper-partisanship.
She and her team also know that she’s not a smart or adept as Daniel Kelly is. And if you think I’m just making that up to boost Kelly- watch or listen to interviews of the two. Protasiewicz sounds as if she has a tenuous grasp on the law-at best-and Kelly sounds like a judicial rockstar. He-really- knows his stuff.
Daniel Kelly is a very impressive legal mind, and i don’t think any honest actor in the legal community would deny that. You’d probably get a different opinion on ‘judge Janet’.
She doesn’t even sound particularly smart when she’s answering basic interview questions, truth be told.
And so-they sure don’t want to see her devoured by Kelly’s intellect and quick wit in a dozen debates. It gets that.
But- to refuse to do any?
That was Protasiewicz’s position until about midday, yesterday, when her refusal to debate was starting to look desperate and pathetic.
And that! Is when she and Ben wicker decided that-maybe she needed to do one. Just one. And so they agreed to do a single debate on march 21st. Three weeks from now-and wispolitics is already saying that this will be the only debate that Protasiewicz agrees to do before the April fourth election.
Now-
Two things to point out: first- one debate is pathetic. Even for Janet.
Again. She’s shamed into doing-one? -debate? That’s’ it? And she and her team -clearly-think they can get away with it. They are so certain that the 15-million-dollar machine that they have set up to sweep her into office will work-if they just hide her away from the public- that that’s what they are going to do.
And the second thing I’d bring to your attention is that this debate isn’t until March 21st. That’s the first day of ‘in person’ early voting, but it’s probably a month after ‘mail in’ ballots will have been mailed out. So a large number of people will have voted-well before- Kelly and even hold their singular debate. And don’t think that Janet’s team doesn’t want it that way.
They wanted to hold this debate as late in the game as possible-so they could have as many pro-Janet votes banked as possible- before she might make an ass of herself in any debate.
I’d love to know how late her team tried to push this date-before Kelly’s team or the state bar association pushed back.
Why would they push back? Because they are hosting it, along with wispolitics and channel 3 in Madison.
Meanwhile- a second outside group is finally going some spending on Dan Kelly’s effort. But even so, Jr Ross says that the spending advantage for Protasiewicz is running 2 to 1-
And that’s just the third-party money. That isn’t counting the seven-million dollars that her campaign is spending.
I know it looks grim-but Brian Hagedorn won his race, despite being at a spending disadvantage, and if the word gets out about how overtly political Protasiewicz is- how openly activist she is promising to be- how light her criminal sentences have been in Milwaukee county-and how she’s too afraid to even debate dan Kelly-once- then Kelly could still win this.
Because Protasiewicz - really is-a uniquely poor and ridiculous candidate. And that will make it doubly tragic if she actually wins this race and becomes the deciding vote on our state supreme court...
But-it also provides an opening for Wisconsinites with common sense and who want quality judges to vote against her and put Kelly on this court.
But-if you don’t think the Wisconsin and national left aren’t laser-focused on this race. If you don’t think that this is the ‘end all and be all’ race for them this spring- even for national democrats-
Then you aren’t skimming the lefty rags.
John Nichols is a long-time liberal columnist stationed in Madison and has a long piece for ‘the nation’ that gives us some insight into the obsession this race is for Ben Wickler and top democrat operatives.
Nichols makes no attempt to hide his biases or characterize-any- of the walker-era reforms as positive:
If you reject this sort of extremism and crackpotism-vote Kelly. Because a court with Protasiewicz on it-will actually be-all of those things that Wickler and the leftists pretend it will be, if Kelly wins.
She is promising to be a stone-cold activist that does the bidding of the democrat party and the national left. The very people who have been destroying this country for the last four years-dating back to at least the antifa and BLM riots.
These are the groups-and actions- Janet Protasiewicz will be defending and boosting-from the high court.
Reject her open radicalism. Please.
photo credit: Fox 6 News/Milwaukee