Last week I wrote about the tensions between the Democratic Party and those who believe the Democratic Party isn’t liberal enough.

I excerpted a piece from Jack Craver of Isthmus and WTDY radio in Madison, a piece that combined contempt of the American voter, Democrats, and basically anyone else who isn’t as left-wing as Craver is.

Well, it turns out Craver must at least once in a while read this blog, because he decided to devote one of his columns to what I wrote about him.

First, some introduction: As a native of the People’s Republic of Madison and a UW graduate, I have read Isthmus on and off far longer than Craver has worked for Isthmus. My background with the weekly goes back to the days when it employed a writer with the pen name of Ursula, whose “Ursula Understands” column answered questions about relationships that few would even think to ask. And until his decision to work elsewhere, I was the occasional non-liberal foil for Isthmus’ Bill Lueders on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Joy Cardin Week in Review program.

The proof that Isthmus has fulfilled its role in the Madison media landscape is demonstrated by The Capital Times’ decision to end daily publication and convert itself into a free tabloid that looks to many readers like Isthmus with a different name, though with similar stupid politics. Isthmus also has from time to time thrown a bone to its non-lefty readers by including columns from such people as Bob Williams, a Stevens Point PR executive who was part of Gov. Lee Sherman Dreyfus’ braintrust, Charlie Sykes (yes, that Charlie Sykes) and now David Blaska, who is that rarest of things — a former Capital  Times reporter and state employee who, as he describes himself, “swims upstream like a heretical flagellate among the collectivist majority.” The nice thing about publications like Isthmus is that you can read their entertainment writing and, if you are so inclined, skim or skip the left-wing crap in the front of the publication.

As for my hometown, I come by my antipathy for Madison honestly — by experience. Between events like the Madison teacher strike, watching tuition money wasted by instructors’ taking my time to pass on, unbidden, their own political beliefs, and the idiotic protest du jour on days of non-inclement weather on the Library Mall, I came to the conclusion that Dreyfus’ observation that Madison is 30 (now 77) square miles surrounded by reality is a gross understatement. It was a revelation when I left Madison and discovered people who didn’t reflexively hate people who shared my political beliefs and besides that had normal non-esoteric interests. (The newspaper’s quote of the week once came from the husband of one of our account  representatives: “Never mind Nicaragua; I want sweet corn!”) Then again, if I want to go back to the old days, I don’t have to go back to Madison; I need only go to Facebook.

Craver starts by bringing up an irrelevant comparison (for purposes of what I wrote) of Gov. James Doyle and his elected predecessor, Tommy Thompson. But there is no question that Thompson was no one’s idea of a fiscal conservative while he was in office. In the 1990s, with economic performance that made writers look for a phrase that sounded like “Roaring ’20s,” you could have your cake and eat it too, with both tax cuts and basically unrestrained spending. The term “structural deficit” may have existed before the 1990s, but it certainly got attention while Thompson was in office, but with tax revenues increasing every year despite tax cuts, well, few people and even fewer voters cared.

Craver also demonstrates most journalists’ affinity for math — not much — with this error:

Doyle spent most of his tenure trying to manage the structural deficit that Tommy Thompson created through his drastic expansion of state government spending on prisons, schools, health care and tax rebates. Doyle, who was raised in the “People’s Republic of Madison,” did what any other radical would do in the face of a budget deficit: Cut state jobs, furloughed state workers, closed a couple corporate loopholes, and raised taxes on incomes over $300,000 by..wait for it…one percent. The stuff of Lenin all right.

Democrats created a new tax bracket of 7.75 percent, above the old highest tax bracket of 6.75 percent.  That is not one percent, because 7.75 divided by 6.75 equals 1.148. In other words, Doyle and Democrats didn’t increase taxes by 1 percent, they increased taxes by 15 percent for income beyond $221,670 for single people and $295,550 for married people filing jointly. That group, I suppose, fits into what Democrats and their apparatchiks are calling the “super rich,” although they’re really not.

Craver makes a valid point that he buries in more left-wing cant:

Doyle did about the least amount one could expect a governor to do to change the current system. He slightly expanded BadgerCare for the poor, he very slightly increased taxes on the rich, and he slightly decreased the size of government. He maintained the status quo. What would you call somebody who does that? Maybe ol’ Webster can help us out. Here’s a word that seems to match: Conservative: Tending or disposed to maintain existing views, conditions, or institutions.

If you want to claim that the terms “conservative” and “liberal” really don’t fit today’s ideologies, fine. The term “liberal” used to have “classical” before it, which describes those of us who believe in the individual rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. By that definition, today’s liberals aren’t liberals at all (except in such areas of personal freedom as drug use and abortion rights). Perhaps Craver prefers the term “neo-socialists.”

Doyle did, remember, start his term (and our sentence with him) in the Executive Residence by pledging “We should not, we must not, and I will not raise taxes,” before raising taxes $2.1 billion. (I’m surprised Craver didn’t make the obligatory George “Read My Lips” Bush reference, a pledge whose reversal went a long way to getting Bush fired by the voters.) The point that goes without acknowledgment or explanation on the left side is why, when Doyle increased taxes and nibbled at the margins of government growth (as if any taxpayer noticed), this state ended up with government finances worse on a proportional basis than only our neighbors to the immediate south, Illinois.

Craver makes another good point that he buries in rhetoric against me and, well, everyone else:

What is most irksome about Prestegard’s post, however, is that he uses relative terms, such as “raising/lowering taxes” to describe political philosophies. This is unfortunately an aspect of political rhetoric we see on both sides of the political spectrum, but it has become especially prevalent on the right, where candidates cannot talk about taxes — only about their wish to not to raise them.

For instance, as much as Republicans howled about the $5 billion Doyle tax hike, they still haven’t repealed them. Why not? Well, they’ve got a budget to balance. But according to their logic, they haven’t raised taxes. (Although they’ve made a few symbolic tax cuts and other corporate taxes that will go into effect in future years.)

Candidates on the right can’t talk about taxes? The fumes where Craver works must be getting really thick. Republican elected officials and candidates at every level talk about taxes all the time. One of the interesting facets of the looming default of our federal government, or whatever the media’s going to call it in the next week, is the issue of raising taxes vs. not raising taxes vs. reforming taxes as part of a debt ceiling deal. In the latter case, the approach the GOP has favored since the days of President Ronald Reagan has been to reduce rates and reduce or eliminate exemptions and deductions. In that case, some taxes would go up, but most would go down.

In that scenario, would demagogic politicians or candidates accuse Republicans of raising taxes because one tax went up even if 10 went down — even if the total tax take decreased? Of course. Accusing politicians of demagoguery is like accusing water of being wet. Political courage is in short supply.

If I asked a Republican (and I’d have to, because I am not a Republican) why they didn’t cut taxes, they probably would say that they had to balance the budget after the billions of dollars of deficits that are the legacy of the Doyle administration and the previous party that controlled the Legislature. (Note that Reagan cut existing taxes in 1981 before the tax reform of 1986.) If Walker and the GOP don’t substantially cut taxes by the 2014 election, voters will be justified in asking themselves why they voted for a party that didn’t do something about our ridiculously high (for what we get) state and local taxes.

This has gone on so long already that a second part seems appropriate. Tune in tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel.