A Star Is Born - WSJ.com

A Star Is Born - WSJ.com

This weekend's Tea Party rally in Madison, Wis., drew familiar figures like Sarah Palin and Andrew Breitbart, but perhaps the most interesting speaker was a 14-year-old girl named Tricia Willoughby.
Tricia wowed, among others, Rachael Larimore, who writes for Slate.com's ladies blog, XX Factor.

Tricia Willoughby: She's alive!

"What's impressive is her strong voice, her confidence, and, let's face it, her youth," Larimore writes. "The Tea Party is often seen as being made up entirely of cranky middle-aged people who don't like paying taxes. But here is a smart, engaging young woman speaking with the poise of someone older."

Showing considerably less poise is the bitter, pudgy middle-aged man featured in a YouTube video of the left-wing counterprotest. "Go home, you little brat!" he shouts at the 14-year-old, struggling to make himself heard over his comrades' boos and noisemakers. "Who the f--- are you to lecture me, you little brat?!"

Apparently the Pudgester is taking a cue from former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, whose New York Times blog post the morning of the rally was titled "Civility Is the Last Refuge of Scoundrels." Yesterday he followed up with a column titled "Let's Not Be Civil." Wait, weren't Krugman and the newspaper that employs him issuing demands for civility just a few months ago? Nah, we have always been at war with Eastasia.

Something else caught our attention about Tricia Willoughby. Larimore points out that "a quick Google search"--which turns up a post by blogger Stacy McCain--"reveals that her parents are pro-life activists in Madison and that Tricia is in a debate club. Cynics will point out that--gasp!--she is homeschooled, as if that ought to discredit her."

Larimore concludes: "There is much debate over what long-lasting impact the Tea Party will have, if any. If there are many more like Tricia Willoughby, I wouldn't underestimate it."

There probably are many more like Tricia Willoughby, aren't there? After all, her parents are "pro-life activists," which means they have a tendency to follow the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply. People on the other political side are more inclined toward subtraction (or as they call it, "choice"), as we explained in our 2005 paper "The Roe Effect."

Here are some Badger State numbers: Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide in 1973. The Wisconsin Department of Health has statewide figures on the annual number of abortions going back to 1975. Tot up the numbers through 1992, and you come up with 316,457.

Scott Walker won the governorship last year by a margin of 124,638. That may not be within the margin of abortion; after all, some of the missing 316,457 would have voted Republican had they existed, and many would not have voted.

But JoAnne Kloppenburg, the left-liberal state Supreme Court candidate who was supposed to save Wisconsin's labor monopolies from Walker's reforms, lost by just 7,316 votes, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (this figure is pending a possible futile recount). It's almost inconceivable that the Roe effect alone is insufficient to account for Justice David Prosser's victory.

Oh, and in four years, Tricia Willoughby will be old enough to vote, while an additional 54,522 will not be.