This past weekend, a group of conservatives got together in the Dells for the third annual
Defending the Mass Riches of
Koch Industries. If you believe the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel or any of the conservative bloggers who attended and/or wrote about it, it was a regular Kumbaya session of freedom fighters who are sick of the government doing silly things like helping people and preventing the rich get even richer at the expense of the poor and middle class.
The truth of the matter is that things were not all hunky-dory. It appears that there was a wee bit of an altercation that required police intervention*.
Working on a tip, I called
Dan Mielke, a rather outspoken and most definitely conservative man, is running for the Republican nomination for the 7th District U.S. Representative. Mr. Mielke told me that he is tired of the machinations of the Republican Party trying to foist their favorites on the voters, as well as usurping control of the TEA Parties. That is why he is running against GOP pretty boy
Sean Duffy, former star of reality TV.
Mr. Mielke told me that he is running against Duffy, because he doesn't feel that Duffy is a real conservative. He feels that Duffy is a hypocrite who claims to have Christian and conservative values, but doesn't display them or only does when it is convenient.
To make his point, Mr. Mielke had a table at the weekend's festivities. On display, he had a computer that was playing a video called "
The Wedding Video," which apparently is a hybrid of home video and reality TV about a wedding between two homosexual men. Sean Duffy, and his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy,
both appear in the video. Mr. Mielke stated that this shows that Duffy isn't consistent between his actions and his words.
Well, it appears that Mrs. Duffy didn't like it being shown and tried to unplug the computer and otherwise interfere with the showing of this video. Things escalated to the point that the organizers of the event came to Mielke to discuss the issue. According to Mielke, they expressed concern if the Duffy children were to see this video and the effect it might have on them. Mielke, trying to be cooperative, agreed to cover the screen with a sheet of paper over the screen. On the paper, he wrote "View at your own risk."
Apparently, this did not meet with Campos-Duffy's satisfaction and she continued her harassment of Mielke and his table. It got to the point where Mielke called 9-1-1 and the police responded. He told them what was going on and that Campos-Duffy was interfering with his campaign. He told the police that he would appreciate them talking to the Duffys and asking them to cease and desist, which the police said was reasonable.
Mielke reported that the Duffys did leave him alone after that, but their supporters continued their harassment and interference. He said that some of the most aggressive of these attackers throughout the day were the big shots of the
Marathon County GOP, who would get into his face and call him names and tell him he is evil for bringing up the truth about the Duffy's past. Of course, the Marathon County GOP has a history of demanding conformity and
taking severe steps if their demands are not met.
Of course,
TEA parties and violence against those that would dare to express an opposing and/or independent point of view are not uncommon.
For those of you who are interested, I could not find a copy of the video itself, or even a decent clip from it, but thanks to a pointer by Mr. Mielke, I found a few partial clips of the video including Sean Duffy and his wife, Rachel, on a site called PopModal.com**. Unfortunately, the gist of the video is lost as the makers of the video talk over it with their own commentary.
Here is one of the clips:
Here is another one:
*There is no word on where
AFP's crack security team was at the time of the incident.
**PopModal.com calls itself the conservative alternative to YouTube. I didn't know that YouTube and their videos of
dancing hamsters had any political leaning.
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