Why are Republicans suddenly attacking public-employee unions around the country? Cronon probably got way too close to the truth when he wrote this:
The most important group, I'm pretty sure, is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which was founded in 1973 by Henry Hyde, Lou Barnett, and (surprise, surprise) Paul Weyrich. Its goal for the past forty years has been to draft "model bills" that conservative legislators can introduce in the 50 states. Its website claims that in each legislative cycle, its members introduce 1,000 pieces of legislation based on its work, and claims that roughly 18% of these bills are enacted into law. (Among them was the controversial 2010 anti-immigrant law in Arizona.)
If you're as impressed by these numbers as I am, I'm hoping you'll agree with me that it may be time to start paying more attention to ALEC and the bills its seeks to promote.
Cronon probably pinpointed the low-profile group that is behind the most recent virulent strain of pathological conservatism. For that sin, the GOP has decided, he must pay. It apparently hopes to extract revenge by finding embarrassing tidbits in Cronon's e-mails, perhaps showing that he violated state laws regarding the use of public equipment for partisan political activities.
In a post titled "A Tactic I Hope Republicans Will Rethink: Using the Open Records Law to Intimidate Critics," Cronon summarizes the issue at hand. Why did Stephan Thompson, of the Wisconsin GOP, target Cronon? The professor provides insight:
It doesn't take a great leap of logic to infer that Mr. Thompson and his colleagues aren't particularly eager to have a state university professor asking awkward questions about the dealings of state Republicans with the American Legislative Exchange Council. This open records request apparently seemed to Mr. Thompson to be a good way to discourage me from sticking my nose in places he doesn't think it belongs.
I confess that I'm surprised to find myself in this strange position, since (as I said in my earlier blog post) my professional interest as a historian has always been to research and understand the full spectrum of American political opinion. I often spend as much time defending Republican and conservative points of view to my liberal friends as vice versa. (For what it's worth, I have never belonged to either party.) But Mr. Thompson obviously read my blog post as an all-out attack on the interests of his party, and his open records request seems designed to give him what he hopes will be ammunition he can use to embarrass, undermine, and ultimately silence me.
One obvious conclusion I draw is that my study guide about the role of ALEC in Wisconsin politics must come pretty close to hitting a bull's-eye. Why else would the Republican Party of Wisconsin feel the need to single out a lone university professor for such uncomfortable attention?
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