Nearly two years ago, Wisconsin voters decided they had had enough of the phony maverick, U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold (D–Wisconsin). Perhaps half of this state’s voters simultaneously noticed they weren’t really being represented either by Wisconsin’s other senator, Herb Kohl, nobody’s senator but his.

Feingold’s replacement, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, got a lengthy interview in the Wall Street Journal:

The plain-spoken Oshkosh businessman stands out in the Senate, and not merely because he’s unaffected. As Mr. Johnson pointed out in one campaign ad, the Senate in 2010 included 57 lawyers (Mr. Feingold was one) but zero manufacturers and just one accountant. With Mr. Johnson, the Senate gained a manufacturer and an accountant. …

Upon arriving in Washington in November 2010 for Senate orientation—the first time he had ever visited the nation’s capital—the political neophyte expected to be enormously frustrated, he says, “but it’s that and then some.” Mr. Johnson may be an outsider, but he wants to work within the system to get things done. That is proving harder than he imagined.

For starters, he says, Congress doesn’t operate with anything close to the efficiency of a business: “If you’re going to compete against an organization, Congress would be the perfect one to compete against.” …

The senator believes the 2012 election is seminal not only because he thinks it’s our last chance to make a U-turn on the road to serfdom—”this election is literally about saving America”—but also because it offers Republicans a singular opportunity to educate the public about the country’s problems, and in doing so, earn a mandate for fixing them.

“People understand that we’re really at this fork in the road. We’ve actually already forked. We’d better hop on over here while this path is still in sight, while we can still hop back on this path, and people get that,” he says. But “far too many Americans have either forgotten—or I’d argue were never taught—the foundational premise of this nation, what our founders did.”

Sounding like he’s channeling the spirit of Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin, he adds: “The government isn’t here to solve our problems. We need government. It’s necessary. But by and large, it’s something to fear because as it grows, our freedoms recede. And as a result, way too many are trading their freedoms . . . for a false sense of economic security.”

At this the senator whips out a batch of PowerPoint slides that he has been presenting to audiences in Wisconsin. He refers to these visits, especially his stops at businesses, as “force multipliers” since they can help inform workers, which “our education system isn’t going to do.”

First up is a line graph that illustrates how federal spending has exploded to 24% of GDP from 2% a century ago. Next, a chart that plots spending and revenue over the past 50 years. Spending has averaged about 20.2% while revenue has trended around 18.1%—regardless of whether the top marginal tax rate was 90% or 28%. “The variation around that mean is tight. We’ve only gone above 20% four times,” he notes.

Then come slides dispelling Democratic myths such as the ones about how Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan blew up the deficit. The tax cuts and war budgets account for just $1.2 trillion of the $5.3 trillion in deficits the Obama administration has run in four years. Republicans during the Bush administration might have been “spending like banshees,” he says, but “they did get the deficit down to $162 billion. Far too high for me, but quaint in comparison to Obama’s record.”

As for the “draconian cuts” that Republicans now supposedly want to inflict, spending even under Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget would be $1 trillion higher in 2022 than it is today.

And the idea that asking the wealthy to “pay their fair share,” whatever that is, can solve the deficit? The president’s so-called Buffett Rule to establish a minimum tax rate of 30% for millionaires would raise about $5 billion a year, while allowing the Bush rates to expire for the wealthy might bring in an additional $67 billion. (“I would like to do a Buffett Rule,” Mr. Johnson deadpans. “Just for Buffett.”)

The tax revenue would be a pittance, given that the deficit this year is $1.1 trillion and the national debt is $16 trillion—which, Mr. Johnson notes, will explode under ObamaCare. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the health law will cost $1.7 trillion over the next 10 years. The senator says that’s a lowball estimate and that the gnomes at the CBO are underestimating the incentive for employers to drop their workers onto government-subsidized exchanges. …

The November election offers a clear choice, he says, between “Mitt Romney, who is committed to fixing the problems and willing to take the risk of picking Paul Ryan—who’s willing to take risks,” and Mr. Obama, who “either doesn’t understand” the problems, “which is possible, or he just thinks he can continue to sell the snake oil and hoodwink the American public.” …

Mr. Johnson is optimistic that in the election Republicans can take the Senate, and if they do, he sees a real opportunity to pass Medicare reform a la Paul Ryan’s premium-support plan, as well as move Medicaid to block grants and undertake a Social Security overhaul that includes some means-testing.

Does he really hope to do all three entitlement reforms at once? “As long as you’re doing it, rip the Band-Aid off, get it over with,” he says.

Such reforms will be a heavy lift even if Republicans pick up in the best-case-scenario seven Senate seats, bringing the GOP total to 54. But what if Republicans stay in the minority and, heaven forbid, Wisconsin’s Madison liberal Tammy Baldwin and Massachusetts’ warrior princess Elizabeth Warren win their races?

Mr. Johnson can’t bear to contemplate the prospect. But Republicans will have to work with the other side and build a political consensus regardless of how many Senate seats they win—much like Ronald Reagan did with his 1986 tax reform. …

Hence, the senator thinks it’s crucial that Republicans use the November election to educate the public about economic growth, which as he says, is “the fun way” to reduce the deficit.

“It’s the unpainful way. It’s what President Obama doesn’t have a clue about. I think Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan know about that. And besides that, I think both men are inherently optimistic, which would be helpful. Don’t you think?”