Famous last words and a bipartisan laughing stock

"Waukesha County could not save Prosser."

That would be yours truly, tapping away one recent Wednesday morning. How morbidly wrong your scribe now appears to be.

I was correct at the time, however, around the previous midnight hour when overwhelmingly Republican Waukesha County finally reported 100% [sic] of its election returns (WaukCo. had been sitting on the AP's results page at 25% for a couple of nailbiting hours).

Armed with an MS Excel file of February's primary results* and comparing in realtime how Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg was improving her general election score dramatically in county after Wisconsin county (every one of which — contra Scott Walker's ludicrous averments, made now even more so in the wake of a rogue election official's enormous bungle — was not Dane County) it was rapidly becoming apparent that the election would hinge on the ferocity of Kloppenburg's clobbering in Waukesha Co. (for the per se clobbering was never in doubt). Sure enough as Tuesday evening turned to Wednesday morning it had grown clear enough that Prosser's Wauk-klopbering was not severe enough to carry the State.

Forfeit a couple Hun

Kloppenburg had previously accomplished her initially required milestone event, reversing Milwaukee County from 54-46 Prosser to roughly 55-45 K-Burg, the 100% [sic] returns from Waukesha County only put Prosser ahead by a couple of hundred votes and based on what was left and Kloppenburg's rising fortunes throughout the rest of the State's most populous counties,** Election Central here reckoned Justice Prosser would quickly forfeit those couple hun, and remain behind the point of no returns, and start packing his bags for July 31.

Which is pretty much exactly what happened until Kathy Nickolaus, a WaukCo. Republican Party True Believer with an apparently lengthy and documented history of extraordinary incompetence, suddenly "discovered" circa 14K ballots from Brookfield yesterday afternoon.

Now it's gotten so bad somebody's had to retain Ben Ginsberg, Esq., of Washington, DC (favorite place in the whole wide world of the "Tea Party" crowd, courted early and often by Justice Prosser, who today happens to be the somebody that's retained Mr. Ginsberg).

Separation of utterances

You may remember one Brian Nemoir, Justice David Prosser's campaign manager, who uttered the now-infamous December 8, 2010 statement of compliance pledging Prosser's fealty to the recently-elected GOP legislative and executive branches of government.

In my view Prosser should have loudly and forcefully jettisoned Nemoir on December 9, 2010, perhaps by figuratively having him rolled over by one of Scott Walker's old federal stimulus-funded, Canadian-made Milwaukee County Transit System motorcoaches.

Instead, Prosser distanced himself over time from the pledge to varying degrees, for the longest while saying little more than, 'Those aren't the words I would have used,' which struck me as particularly unsatisfying because if there's anybody who knows how many different ways there are to say the exact same thing, it's a lawyer.

The Prosser campaign's December pledge of fealty to the Fitz Van Walker regime remained firmly affixed to the candidate's hide right up until two days before the election, when Journal Communications, Inc. ran it all by us one more time in the course of its incoherent endorsement of the politically conservative Supreme Court justice.

Waukesha ha ha

"Waukesha County" is a punchline among liberals — its mere mention invokes the equivalent velocity of eye-rolling as, for example, does "Charlie Sykes" — and even candidate Kloppenburg made a Waukesha County crack at an appearance in Shorewood (an administrative suburb of Milwaukee but in fact an integral part of Milwaukee).

Funny thing is, it's even a punchline among conservative Republicans.

During one especially candid conversation with a Dane County Republican (that would be yer proverbial hen's tooth) official from a couple of weeks ago (I don't have the link handy; I'll dig it up and post it later) Nemoir's mal-spelled renunciation of the bedrock American constitutional doctrine of separation of powers presented itself.

Quipped Justice Prosser: 'Well I guess there's just a little too much Waukesha County in Brian Nemoir.' Yep, we are knowing the feeling.

* Why the expert wag professors and lawyers insist on comparing Tuesday's results with last November's — or those of the 2008 presidential election, fer the luvva gawd — is beyond your humble correspondent's ken. The political landscape has been altered so substantively by Fitz Van Walker's sundry lawless antics that those prior contests are all but meaningless to the present one. The most directly relevant and of most recent and timely vintage of temperature-taking of the public's attitude toward the Wisconsin Supreme Court general election is, obviously, the Wis. S. Ct. primary election. Or it could be also that the local press has roughly only two of each expert wag professor and lawyer in its desk Rolodex.

More likely the latter, as The Truth is Out Here, and not necessarily anywhere within Journal Communications, Inc. County and environs.

** And a touch of intuition, the poli scientist's ancient Chinese secret.

eta: Jay Bullock debunks once again the Opéra Bouffe that is WPRI.