Jeff Fitzgerald: 2 + 2 = 5

Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald today:

We ran on this.  We were going to get the fiscal house in order. This is how we ran in our election. This is how we picked up 14 seats from you guys.  The public spoke (in the elections).  They said, ‘no more, no more. We want you to go to Madison and do what you say you’re going to do.’

Says PolitiFact: 

But Walker, who offered many specific proposals during the campaign, did not go public with even the bare-bones of his multi-faceted plans to sharply curb collective bargaining rights. He could not point to any statements where he did. We could find none either.

It maddens to no end how Republicans still push this debunked narrative.  There is no other way around it, they've seen the polls: they have to know they are lying.  They lived through their campaigns.  They know the eradication of collective bargaining was not discussed.  They have to know saying they ran on this is a logical facsimile to stating 2 + 2 = 5.

...right?  That this is all done in the name of political manipulation. That this is all done in the name of gaining and imposing one's power.  Walker, Scott Fitzgerald, Jeff Fitzgerald, Lazich, Werwie, et al: lying to perpetuate their own and their ideology's power.  While a politician lying is hardly novel and rarely noteworthy, once a lie has been exposed, the public is generally saved from having it forced down their throats.

The repetition of and the refusal to stop this lie in the objective face of contradictory evidence does not just dishearten.  It gobsmacks.  It snakes its hand to the base of your cerebral core and squeezes until you ask and beg and plead and scream for mercy and reprieve and a semblance of sanity.  It must be asked and considered whether Republicans believe the lie.  Whether the lie is not symptomatic of politics-as-usual but axiomatic of an Orwellian nightmare.

The repetition suggests Orwellian nightmare.  The heart hopes for mere lying.  The enlightened mind weeps.