GOP Was Right On Broadband

A couple weeks ago Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee rejected Gov. Tony Evers’ plan to spend $750 million in state money on broadband expansion. Democrats howled. I have even heard some Dems charge that this is all part of a plot to keep people dumb and uninformed because those are the kind of people who vote for Republicans. These are the same Dems who want to crack down on the Internet for spreading conspiracy theories. Won’t higher speeds just deliver nutty paranoia quicker?

Anyway, Republicans on the committee said they voted against the money because it wouldn’t be needed. Looks like they were right. Yesterday, it was announced that the state would receive over $1 billion to expand broadband from Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill. That’s on top of $146 million that has already been spent. The Public Service Commission estimated that it would take as much as $1.4 billion to do the job and now his own PSC Chairperson said yesterday that this, combined with other private and public investments, would get us there.

The rejection of Evers’ proposal should have been bipartisan and unanimous. With other priorities, it would have been wasteful to spend $750 million of state money when it was widely known even before yesterday’s official announcement that the state was in line to get even more than that from the feds. (A fair argument on the other side is that that money just ended up going into another massive tax cut for the rich, a true core Republican value. Of course, a lot of money also went to local governments and schools and it’s not as if you can track the journey of any one dollar from one priority to the other. )

In addition to the Democrats’ position being fiscally irresponsible, it also points up a fundamental weakness in their approach to rural voters. When you ask Democrats why they lose in rural areas they answer with a non sequitur. “Broadband!” they sputter. “We’re going to give them broadband!” What’s their ten point plan for rural America? Well, the first three points are expanded broadband while the following seven relate to expanding broadband.

Evers won reelection last November while losing 56 of 72 counties and his party lost the mostly rural Third Congressional District that it had held for a couple of decades under the moderate Ron Kind. Getting destroyed in rural Wisconsin does not happen to Democrats because they haven’t spent enough money on broadband. It happens because mine has become the party of urban, college-educated people who look down their noses at anyone who doesn’t live within a quarter mile of a Starbucks. And soon that’ll be a quarter mile of a unionized Starbucks.

We don’t lose in rural America because of broadband or any other specific issue. The same bill that expands broadband also spends a ton of money on rural roads, for which Democrats also get no credit. We lose because we don’t connect on fundamental values: hard work, personal responsibility, common sense.

Democrats also lose because we’ve got the reputation as the party that never saw a problem that couldn’t be solved by throwing money at it. So, while the Joint Finance Democrats thought they were appealing to rural voters with their support for another $750 million on top of over $1 billion that was already coming our way, they just moved their party even further away from connecting with anybody outside of Madison and Milwaukee.

When rural America gets faster Internet voters there will be able to learn more about how Democrats just don’t get them.