Odd Dem attack on Nicholson

Democrats attack GOP candidate for agreeing with them

It’s a weird time in Wisconsin politics when the state’s Democratic Party is rapping a Republican U.S. Senate candidate for … secretly being a Democrat?

But that’s exactly what’s happening, as the DPW has set up a website taking aim at GOP candidate Kevin Nicholson, a U.S. Marine veteran and former Democratic activist. The site, disguised with a pro-Nicholson address (kevinforwisconsin.com), raps the now-Republican for being a “fake conservative” who “repeatedly lied” to gain support for his candidacy.

So for those keeping score at home, liberals are attacking Nicholson for agreeing with them.

This nonsense actually stems from Nicholson’s early 20s, when he served as head of the College Democrats of America, even addressing the 2000 Democratic National Convention in support of Vice President Al Gore’s presidential candidacy. To his credit, Nicholson has been open about his conversion to the GOP, telling Milwaukee-area television host Mike Gousha that “Like most converts on anything … when you make a decision to leave one thing and become something else because of your experience, it’s hard-earned,” he said.

Yet like a spurned lover left at the altar, state Democrats aren’t having it. They’ve torched Nicholson on Twitter, repeatedly questioning his “authenticity.” Based on the DPW social media accounts, one would get the impression Nicholson already has won the Republican nomination and is on his way to challenging Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin. Somehow, the Democrats’ Twitter feed mentions Nicholson more often than Snoop Dogg’s feed

mentions marijuana.

Outside the scope of the DPW’s ire are other GOP candidates such as state Sen. Leah Vukmir and businessman Eric Hovde, both conservatives without the baggage of having switched parties. Clearly, each will have his and her say about Nicholson’s ideological predilections over the next year.

But these other candidates are currently invisible to state Democrats, who are trying to supply Nicholson’s opponents with ammunition in hopes of setting off an internecine squabble. (For instance, Vukmir already has said she is “not familiar with Kevin's conservative track record at this point, other than him saying he's a conservative.")

This would be evidence that Nicholson may be the candidate who Democrats fear the most — their polling likely suggests that keeping him from winning the nomination would ease the pressure on Baldwin next November.

But political parties meddling in an opposing party’s primaries frequently backfires. Remember a couple of years ago, when Democrats were shopping the line that Marco Rubio actually was a scarier potential president than Donald Trump? To Democrats at the time, this likely made sense — why not knock out a candidate likely to beat Hillary Clinton, thus elevating one that couldn’t possibly beat her? And how did that turn out?

But political parties never learn, and thus we have state Democrats shredding a Republican candidate for, in their view, surreptitiously sharing their ideals.

Of course, it’s easy to tell what a candidate sees as his or her greatest weakness — it’s the issue on which they go ridiculously over the top to try to blunt criticism headed their way. It’s why Baldwin at some point is going to start wearing military fatigues to her town hall meetings in order to fend off criticism that she mishandled an opioid crisis at the Tomah VA hospital.

Similarly, in order to burnish his conservative credentials, Nicholson has cranked the volume on his Republican rhetoric all the way up. In response to his once supporting the proabortion group Emily’s List, Nicholson has adamantly maintained he is now prolife, saying that “it is unacceptable for our government to systematically allow the lives of innocent children to be taken." If his primary opponents press him on the life issue, don’t be surprised if he proposes fetuses be allowed to carry concealed weapons.

What we do know is that the Republican primary is a family affair that will be settled by Republicans. Perhaps Democrats should work more on showing conservatives why their ideas aren’t so objectionable instead of trying to poison Republican candidates with them.