HUFFINGTON'S EVOLVING, POINTING TO THE FUTURE

Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, R-Waukesha, is not a gentleman with
whom I usually find myself in agreement. But he had a point when he
suggested Tuesday night that Arianna Huffington, the featured speaker
at this year's Wisconsin Women in Government recognition dinner, did
not exactly qualify as a "Republican'' speaker.

There's a quiet little competition between Democrats and Republicans
over guest speaker slots at the amply-attended annual event, and
Jensen keeps tabs. After Huffington's speech, in which she savaged
both parties with equal energy, condemned the current campaign finance
system as legalized bribery, and called on her audience to address the
widening gap between rich and poor, Jensen allowed as how "I think
they still owe us a Republican.''

On paper, Huffington, the former wife of a former Republican
congressman who was once the toast of Newt Gingrich's Washington,
looked to have the right credentials; but the woman who came to
national prominence as a so-called "conservative commentator''
delivered an address that was far more radical than anything you'll
hear from most of Wisconsin's leading Democrats.

That's because Huffington has evolved from her conservative roots to a
rabble-rousing stance that more closely approximates the direction in
which American politics is headed. Jensen is smart enough to recognize
as much; as was Barbara Lawton, just about the only prominent
Wisconsin Democrat who is Jensen's intellectual equivalent.

A lot of Democrats in the crowd couldn't see beyond Huffington's
entirely appropriate criticisms of the lamentable Al Gore; indeed, one
top Democrat even told me, "I didn't really listen to her; she's just
a Republican.''

Lawton did listen, and the 1998 candidate for lieutenant governor
heard in Huffington's speech the rough outlines of a new politics.
Huffington's core points were these: It's time to drive special
interest money out of our politics, to address the widening gap
between rich and poor, and to rein in the prison-industrial complex by
ending the monumentally failed war on drugs. Lawton, who actually gets
around Wisconsin and talks to real people, quickly recognized that
these are issues that citizens talk about much more than the silly
agenda items advanced by both the Democratic and Republican parties
these days.

After Huffington finished speaking, she and Lawton chatted amiably and
energetically with an ideological focus that would have confirmed all
of Jensen's fears.

I only wish Attorney General James Doyle would have stuck around to
talk with Huffington. Doyle, in particular, would do well to imbibe
some of Huffington's wisdom before formally launching his much
anticipated campaign for the 2002 Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

Doyle is a smart man with great progressive roots, yet he runs the
risk of being the gubernatorial candidate of the murky Democratic
center -- a circumstance that will guarantee his defeat.

If Doyle runs for governor as a drug war-battling,
lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key, prison-building Democrat -- a
whiter shade of Tommy Thompson's pale, so to speak -- he will lose. On
the other hand, if he recognizes the swing of the political pendulum
that Huffington and others like her are riding, he will be a
contender, and very possibly the winner.

Politics in America is changing, rapidly. People who were listening on
Tuesday night -- especially Jensen and Lawton -- heard the sound of
the future. Jensen didn't exactly like the message; Lawton did.

But they were smart enough to understand that they were tapping into a
significant dialogue that's going on in America -- a dialogue that is
far more important than the middling mush of non-ideas being traded by
George W. Bush, Al Gore and their minions on both sides of the
political aisle.