Uppity Wisconsin

Funny how big a crowd of 5,000 (if it really was that big) played in the media when it was right-wing teabaggers coming to protest paying for their government services. It was portrayed as a mammoth grassroots uprising, a taxpayer revolt.

When perhaps twice that number of people marched in Milwaukee Friday for immigration and labor rights, the stories were about how much smaller the crowd was than last year's 30,000.

The May Day rally organized by Voces de la Frontera had no official crowd estimate. The estimated attendance at the Republican-organized teabag rally at the state Capitol came from the organizers.

Given that precedent, Voces should have told reporters there were 50,000 at Veterans Park.

Update: They did estimate 30,000.

Many more marched than stayed for the speeches, but the photos are impressive.

Steele integrates convention. I thought I might get some flak for writing Friday that GOP Chairman Michael Steele might be the only black face in the room at the R's state convention. But here's the Journal Sentinel, reporting on his speech:

Steele - who appeared to be the only African-American in the room Friday - said when he visited a Maryland Republican Party dinner in the mid-1980s he was "obviously a stranger in the room."

Steele's invitation to moderates was a bit underwhelming. Join us, but we won't change a bit, he said:

"All you moderates out there, y'all come. I mean, that's the message," Steele said at a news conference. "The message of this party is this is a big table for everyone to have a seat. I have a place setting with your name on the front.

"Understand that when you come into someone's house, you're not looking to change it. You come in because that's the place you want to be."

Stand back so you don't get trampled in the stampede of moderates to join the party where the lunatic fringe will continue to call the shots.

Tommy pulls a Favre. Tommy the T, ever the publicity hog, sets a new record by announcing for the fifth straight year that he might run against Jim Doyle for governor. Scot Ross's column has the gory details.

Even Brett Favre can't match it -- except that Favre actually did more than flap his jaws last year. Tommy has never suited up since leaving the office God knows when, but a long time ago.

Straw poll. Scott Walker swept the straw poll at the convention, with Mark Neumann, who's not yet a candidate, getting only 25 of more than 400 votes cast. Tommy Thompson got zero -- not even a single write-in.

Hope someone rushes the results to Governor Tom Barrett, who won the Dem straw polls in 2001 and 2002 but learned that doesn't translate into votes from actual voters.

In olden days, the GOP convention actually used to endorse candidates, and the loser frequently dropped out. That changed after 1978, when the convention endorsed Bob Kasten, who got his butt kicked in the primary by Lee Sherman Dreyfus, who campaigned to "let the people decide."