The envelope is hard to miss, with its red, white and blue USA stamp and then, in the return address corner, these bold red letters: URGENT RECALL ELECTION. Inside is a letter with "Governor Scott Walker" written in large type on the top left. The letter is addressed to my mother-in-law, who died at age 88 last year from Alzheimer's disease. She was a lifelong Illinois resident who last donated to Republican causes at least 10 years ago, yet somehow she remains in the database for those seeking to fund conservative causes.
"I'm proud of your conservative leadership," Scott Walker tells her. "The President's Chicago Political Machine and vengeful, power-consumed Big Government Union Bosses have put a bull's eye on my back...I urgently need your help to win."
To save the republic from an Obama second term that would "devastate our economy," Walker pleads with my dead mother-in-law to give $50, $250, $2,500 or more.
Of course, any political organization can make a mistake and fail to update a database (though you would think after 10 years of non-answers, someone might make an inquiry or remove a recipient). But I think this letter is worth bringing here so people can see not only Walker's alarmist untruths and distortions but how he is positioning himself as a national candidate, linking himself to the fight against Obama, and trying to influence his statewide contest by appealing for out-of-state funds. This reinforces Mother Jones' recent piece about Walker's camp using the Tea Party nationwide to raise buckets of money to send to Wisconsin.
Though pro-recall groups may also be fundraising outside the state, I have yet to receive anything from them or from any other liberal group, though I was an Obama volunteer in 2008 (canvassed in Wisconsin) and should be listed in liberal databases for my magazine subscriptions alone. I can't compare the kind of literature that pro-recall people are sending out but I would hope it isn't as full of scare tactics and sleaze as the piece mailed to my mother-in-law by the Friends of Scott Walker (signed by him, and with his name on the letterhead).
If you'd like to see what messages Walker's marketers are sending little old (and/or dead) ladies and other Tea Partiers across America, follow below the fold. (All punctuation, including Hysterical and Unnecessary Capitalization and scary boldface, is reproduced the way it appears in the letter.)
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