Former many-term Senator Russ Feingold sat down for an extended interview with Politico’s Manu Raju, during which he apparently decided to reinvent his record from scratch and hope Wisconsin voters have collective amnesia, just like he’s hoping they’ll forget he’s a career politician if he forbids his supporters to use the word “senator.”
Raju reports on a scene from a recent Feingold fundraiser, where his warmup act, Pierce County Democrat Chair Jim Camery, offered an interesting explanation for Feingold’s 2010 defeat at the hands of Republican Sen. Ron Johnson:
“2010 was just so different, with Obama just having come in and a lot of the tea party people just kind of coming out of the woodwork — coming out of the trailer parks, essentially,” Camery said at a Feingold fundraiser in River Falls, Wis.. “There was a different mix of people at the polls.”
What did Feingold have to say? Apparently it was crickets from the elite university professor as his surrogate insulted more than a half-million Wisconsinites who voted for Johnson in 2010. It’s always a good strategy to sneer at the people you’re running to represent, just ask Bruce Braley.
The profile was basically an all-around disaster for Feingold. In addition to the trailer park comment, he relied heavily on lies and hypocrisy. The best of the rest:
On Obamacare, Feingold told Politico he regrets that millions of Americans were “lied to” about Obamacare by unnamed entities:
“I understand people have been lied to repeatedly about what was in the bill. I regretted that”.
Who exactly was doing this lying? Flashback to 2010, when Feingold carried water for Obamacare’s central and most egregious lie: that if you like your healthcare plan you can keep it. He wrote in the LaCrosse Tribune:
So to help answer these questions and correct some of the misinformation I hear about the bill, here are some frequently asked questions along with answers: I currently purchase my own insurance. Will this bill force me into a public plan? No. The health care law does not create a public plan. If you like the plan you purchase, the health care reform bill does not force you to change it.
On his newly-minted outsider status, Feingold told Raju “my life isn’t about running for office” – this coming days after he claimed in a Q&A with the News Sickle-Arrow that he’s spent “only a small portion” of his life in political office. American Rising fact checked that claim here.
Finally, Professor Feingold, who has been paid over $350,000 to lecture at colleges and universities since leaving office in 2010, attacked his opponent for liking to “lecture” and holding hearings “almost every day.” Apparently a senator who does his job is deserving of derision from Feingold the academic.
If this interview is any indication, out-of-touch Feingold is much better suited for the ivory tower than representing the people of Wisconsin.