Cowardice In Milwaukee

When I first read this story, it offered me a chuckle, as it appeared as if the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -  given a slate of unappealing Democratic candidates -  choose instead to forgo the pre-election editorial endorsement process entirely.

 Romenesko reports:

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — Wisconsin’s largest and most influential news organization — won’t be endorsing in the very tight presidential and Senate races this year.

Inside the paper, I’m told, there’s the feeling that “we have two tough picks to make and we’re taking a pass,” and the paper is less relevant because of it.

...The Journal Sentinel endorsed Barack Obama in 2008.


Can't quite pull the trigger on that one again, I sneered.  And Tammy Baldwin is just a wee bit Left of where the state of Wisconsin is these days, isn't she?  And by a wee bit, I mean...well, you know.

But then I caught the update at the bottom of the page:

Veteran Wisconsin journalist Bruce Murphy writes: “Sources tell me the newspaper felt the heat of endorsing Republican Gov. Scott Walker in the bitterly contested recall election and decided it wasn’t worth it.”

No doubt the Journal Sentinel  got the blast of hatred from the Left that is reserved for those whom they feel by birthright belong to them, but have dared to stray off the plantation. And it seems as if these ugly intimidation techniques have succeeded.  Why else would the paper suddenly refuse to make any endorsements at all, in one of the most important elections in our history, unless they were afraid of retribution for endorsing two Republicans - Mitt Romney and Tommy Thompson?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel  may have saved itself from the mob today, but now they are beholden to them.  Rather than act, as our Founders intended, as a beacon of free speech and political accountability, they have abandoned both in order to avoid retribution.  For the moment.

Liberty shines a bit less bright throughout Wisconsin today.  Which is always the case when cowardice rules the day.

“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”
~ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.”
~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali