Walker Wins Paul Weyrich Award

[midnight]

by Rebekah Wilce — October 22, 2012 - 10:59am
Topics: Right Wing
Projects: ALEC Exposed
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Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, an alumnus of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) from his time as a state legislator, received an award named after one of ALEC's founders, Paul Weyrich, in February 2012. The award went unnoticed at the time as Walker battled a recall election, but was discovered by the "2old2care" blog.

Weyrich, a Racine native who died in 2008, didn't just found ALEC. The right-wing political apparatchik was the founding president of the Heritage Foundation, and led the Free Congress Foundation, a politically and socially conservative think tank striving, as its website used to say, to "return [America] to the culture that made it great, our traditional, Judeo-Christian, Western culture." He helped shape the right-wing agenda for more than thirty years.


Walker received the "State or Local Elected Official of the Year" award, one of several Weyrich Awards announced at an awards dinner organized by Coalitions for America, an association of conservative activist organizations that meets weekly. Weyrich was its national chairman. This year's dinner was chaired by current Heritage Foundation President Dr. Ed Feulner.

Weyrich and Walker had much in common. Weyrich famously said (video at left), "I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people – they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." In May 2011, Walker signed into law an ALEC-inspired "Voter ID" law that makes it harder for African Americans, students, and the elderly to vote. Two Wisconsin courts have ruled against the law, noting it would do nothing to prevent phantom "voter fraud" but would cause real obstacles for real Wisconsin voters. While voter ID in Wisconsin is on hold for the November 2012 elections, mysterious bill boards have appeared in Milwaukee's inner city declaring that Voter Fraud is a Felony! in an attempt to sow confusion and suppress the vote.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/10/11805/walker-wins-paul-weyrich-award

[Scuba]

1. A well-deserved award it is, in recognition of his criminal and anti-democracy efforts.