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Recall ready?

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Love him? Hate him?

Gov. Scott Walker typically attracts both groups when he travels around the state these days, and the official kickoff of the recall season began in earnest last Tuesday when the state Democratic Party and various other groups and labor unions were to file their recall papers.

But the unofficial recall season began earlier when Republicans pulled an end run around Democrats Nov. 4. David Brandt of Muskego, a Walker campaign contributor, filed the first recall papers with the Government Accountability Board.

And why would Republicans launch a recall against their own candidate? Same reason they fielded what were called “fake” candidates to force primaries in the last round of state Senate recall races: to give their candidates extra time.

Wisconsin campaign finance law has an unusual quirk in that there are no donation limits between the time a notice of recall is filed and when the Government Accountability Board certifies the recall petition.

That will give the Walker camp an extra 12 days to add to the recall war chest. The petitions likely won’t be certified until February and in the meantime, individual donors can contribute any amount more than the usual limit of $10,000.

With the national profile that Wisconsin has gained since Walker’s controversial budget repair bill was announced, along with a presidential election coming ever closer, the amount of cash coming into this race could be staggering.

Yes, it’s a shrewd move by Republicans to get a jump on fundraising in the short term, but either party should be wary of strategies like these in the long term.

One could argue that Senate Democrats fleeing to Illinois to prevent a vote on the budget repair bill was the same thing.

But even though these moves are legal, they still strike many as not being right.

And if you’ve followed politics long enough, you know that power ebbs and flows from one party to the other.

So down the road, if Democrats regain power and start pulling the same tricks, neither side will have much right to complain.