Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce has a few questions for supposed business person Mary Burke:

1.) You have repeatedly said that you will take good job creation ideas from any source, whether they are from a Democrat, Republican or someone else. Can you name a single Republican economic initiative you support and one Democratic economic initiative you oppose?

2.) Act 10 has already saved Wisconsin taxpayers at least $3 billion. If you restore collective bargaining privileges to government employees, how will you replace the lost savings in a manner that holds taxpayers harmless from tax hikes going forward?

3.) What is the role of state government in creating jobs?

4.) Why do you oppose the Manufacturers and Agricultural Production Tax credit, which makes Wisconsin’s two largest business sectors more competitive by encouraging investment in Wisconsin instead of other states?

5.) You are on record of saying that you don’t believe Wisconsin’s tax burden is too high. What taxes would you raise?

6.) You are on record opposing an iron ore mine in the Penokee Hills. If a permit is issued, the mine would create as many as 2,000 high-paying, middle-class jobs in an economically challenged part of the state. What is your specific plan to replace the 2,000 mining and construction jobs in northern Wisconsin with jobs that would also pay an average of $60,000 per year?

I didn’t watch the debate between Burke and Scott Walker Friday night. (Seriously, Wisconsin broadcasters, if you want people to watch debates, think about not scheduling them on high school football Friday nights.) I gather that Burke answered none of those questions, or at least none of them satisfactorily.

Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity wonders if Burke is correctly representing her own positions:

First, she tried to downplay the Wisconsin recovery by comparing us to other Midwestern States she claims are doing better economically. Two of the states she refers to are Indiana and Michigan. Both states recently passed Right-to-Work legislation and attribute much of their economic recovery to those important changes in law.

Second, she minimizes the benefit of the Walker tax cuts by claiming that it’s “only” $11 per month.  I don’t know about you, but any time the government lets me keep more of my money, there is no such thing as “only.”

And what about so many Wisconsinites struggling to make ends meet as a result of mismanagement of the economy by a Doyle-Burke administration and Washington, DC? Seems to me that extra $11 per month would go a long way toward diapers, groceries and clothes for Badger state families.

Is she just claiming that the tax cuts should have been bigger?  If so, she’s trying to marginalize Governor Walker’s effort to let hard working families keep more of their money. And if so, she should immediately come out in support of massive, across the board cuts in spending and taxes.

In scrambling to gain traction and legitimacy, Mary Burke is making the conservative case for moving Wisconsin forward.

Burke has another problem, identified by James Wigderson:

In her closing statement in Friday night’s debate with Governor Scott Walker, Mary Burke stole a page from the Barack Obama campaign plan in 2008 and promised “a new tone” in politics. “I am also going to set a different tone.”

After taking another swipe at Walker, she added, “I am not only going to change the tone; I’m going to change the system. There is no way that big money and special interests should have a greater voice than you do.”

The atmosphere is unlikely to get better if Burke is elected.  It’s not as if Burke is going to walk into the Capitol and the “Capitol singers” will suddenly dissipate instead of continuing their harassment of Republican legislators. Segway Boy Jeremy Ryan will not suddenly become a decent human being.

But if Friday night’s debate performance by Burke is any indication, her election as governor would only make the “tone” of Wisconsin politics worse.

Twice in the debate, Burke referred to a donation by Gogebic Taconite to a private organization as a campaign donation. Burke even claimed that the donation influenced the governor’s decision to support changing mining regulations to make possible an iron mine in northern Wisconsin.

This, of course, is a lie. The money was not donated to a campaign but to another organization supportive of policies that would make Gogebic Taconite’s proposed mine possible, the Wisconsin Club for Growth. But Burke stated that the donation caused Walker to support the mine even though he has publicly stated he did not even know about the donation.

Such a baseless attack on Walker’s character is typical of the Obama strategy of claiming to try to change the tone of politics but is really taking politics to a lower level.

Burke took the demagoguery further when she said that a majority of Wisconsinites would support making such a donation illegal. Is Burke endorsing the repeal of the First Amendment right to free speech? In Burke’s Wisconsin, will the excesses of the John Doe investigation, the pre-dawn raids, the gag orders and the attacks on reputations, receive the official support of the governor’s office?

We shouldn’t be surprised that Burke’s campaign would take this turn. The Democratic Party in Madison that constructed her campaign is steeped in Walker-derangement syndrome. Former spokesman Graeme Zielinski  is only a consultant now to Democratic politicians like Chris Abele but the other end of the leash, Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate, is still there. One of her campaign aides, Paula Zellner, was ticketed after a picket at a home in Racine where a fundraiser was held when, according to the police report, Zellner intimidated elderly attendees.

So when the chairman of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz used a domestic violence metaphor, that Walker was showing women the back of his hand, of course Burke could not bring herself to condemn Schultz.

How ironic, but how telling, that the only kind words Burke could find Friday night about Walker – after an embarrassing pause – was to praise his work on domestic violence. That her handlers didn’t prepare her for such a common question is an indication of the sulphuric air the Democrats are breathing in their constant demonization of Walker. They couldn’t think of anything nice to insert into the script they wrote for Burke.

If Burke is elected governor, the left will feel that all of their ugly protests, smears and threats were worth it because it helped drive a Republican governor from office. The only new tone, judging from Friday night’s debate, will be Burke endorsing the ugliness from the office of the governor.