Posts Tagged ‘Scott Walker’

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Still More Wisconsin Recall Election Tidbits

Friday, June 8th, 2012

Still more Wisconsin recall tidbits continue to trickle out. I may have a more substantial reaction to a particularly egregious type of liberal self-delusion regarding the results later, but here’s a nice sampler of links:

  • “Public employee unions insist that dues money be deducted from members’ paychecks and sent directly to union treasuries. So in practice, public employee unions are a mechanism for the involuntary transfer of taxpayers’ money to the Democratic Party.”
  • Charles Krauthammer nails it, as usual:

    The unions’ defeat marks a historical inflection point. They set out to make an example of Walker. He succeeded in making an example of them as a classic case of reactionary liberalism. An institution founded to protect its members grew in size, wealth, power and arrogance, thanks to decades of symbiotic deals with bought politicians, to the point where it grossly overreached. A half-century later these unions were exercising essential control of everything from wages to work rules in the running of government — something that, in a system of republican governance, is properly the sovereign province of the citizenry.

  • “The left picked this fight, on the issue and in the place of its choice; it chose to recall Walker because it believed it could win a showcase victory. That judgment was fatally flawed.”

    The Walker reforms hurt AFSCME in Wisconsin almost as badly as Ronald Reagan hurt PATCO, the air traffic controller union he famously crushed in 1981. Public sector workers have deserted their unions in droves since the state clipped union bargaining rights and stopped automatic collection of dues. After a string of bitter, humiliating and expensive defeats, labor in Wisconsin will now be a shadow of its former self, lacking the troops, the money and the morale.

    The public sector unions are critical to what remains of the American left. The power of the public service unions in Democratic politics pulls the entire party to the left and gives ideas that are important to the left an access to power that they would otherwise lack. But more important than that, they provide a kind of center to a movement that otherwise threatens to fragment into antagonistic cliques.

  • Ace on why the union gravy train is doomed.
  • It is not clear the left was outspent in its attempts to reverse Gov. Walker’s reforms. And the widely-repeated claim that the left was outspent by more than 7-to-1 in the most recent recall election is clearly false.
  • Karl Rove looks at the numbers.
  • Peggy Noonan says “The vote was a blow to the power and prestige not only of the unions but of the blue-state budgetary model.”
  • Jesse Jackson compared Scott Walker to George Wallace.
  • And Jon Stewart’s Daily Show uses the occasion to get in the show’s weekly Affirmative Action quota of barbs aimed at the left:

    • The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
    Madison Men – Scott Walker Prevails in Wisconsin Recall
    www.thedailyshow.com
    Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

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    Roundup Of Wisconsin Recall Reactions

    Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

    Here’s a nice juicy roundup of reactions to Scott Walker’s Wisconsin recall victory, and what it means:

  • “The resounding failure by unions and Democrats to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on Tuesday is a significant moment for democratic self-government. It shows that an aroused electorate can defeat a furious and well-fed special interest that wants a permanent, monopoly claim on taxpayer wallets.” Also: “Public unions are never going to cede their dominance over taxpayers without a fight.”
  • “For Democrats, 18 months of campaigning and more than $31 million later, Wisconsin is a bust.”
  • “Walker won because he represented the taxpayer, while his opponent represented the groups whose livelihoods depend on bilking the taxpayer.”
  • Walker won because his policies work.
  • You know those exit polls showing Obama would still win the state by 12? Adjusted for the actual election results, they show the state is a dead heat.
  • “The Walker victory is a big win for a more traditional form of democracy and a big loss for what Herbert Croly called ‘progressive democracy.'”
  • NRO Symposium: “The public union is a Tocquevillian nightmare.”
  • Did the Tea Party put Walker over the top?
  • Going county-by-county, Democrats had good turnout. It was just that Republican turnout was better.
  • More lessons from Wisconsin, including the note that liberals weren’t complaining when union money was dominating elections, or when Obama raised over $1 billion in 2008.
  • Despite liberal assertions to the contrary, “none of the money spent on Walker’s behalf would have been illegal before Citizens United either.”
  • Jim Geraghty says that Scott Walker has done the Wisconsin Democratic Party, the public sector unions, the progressives and angry leftists a favor: “He has liberated them from the soothing illusion that they are popular, and that the public agrees with them.” Sorry Jim, can’t agree with you there. Go over to Daily Kos, or Democratic Underground, or even Twitter, and you’ll find that the liberal capacity for self-delusion is essentially infinite. For example, many are crowing that they actually won the recall because they picked up the state senate seat they needed to flip that chamber to Democratic control. Oh, one problem: It’s not scheduled to meet anytime between now and November, when redistricting will probably flip it back to Republican control.
  • Consensus distillation of winners and losers.
  • Let’s take a look at the reactions of one of the less delusional liberals. Of course, there’s the usual hard-left refusal to consider the possibility that public employee unions have become a parasitic class that is helping to drive government toward insolvency, and an insistance that if they just fought harder they could have won. But there’s also a fairly cold-eyed realization that Republicans fought better, organized better, and played to win:

    The Republicans mobilized, just like we did. But they mobilized their party, they mobilized their donors, they didn’t do it in a half-assed cover your ass way where their ego wasn’t on the line. They doubled down on Scott Walker. They showed no weakness. They played to won, and, ultimately, they won.

    (Some snippage, including how the DNC was willing to pour money into the losing campaigns of Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson but not Wisconsin.)

    I hope we can see from this that when it comes to certain people and certain causes, the Democratic Party pulls out all the stops. They spend it in ways that are not related to any strategy of furthering progressive goals or shoring up progressive long term assets like union organization and GOTV. This isn’t about strategy to them. It’s about control.

    So when you look at the Republicans gleefully celebrating, give them credit, because this is a massive victory for them. They didn’t just win handily. They saved a hero, a man who stood up to the unions and didn’t flinch, a man who, while divisive, divided things correctly as far as they were concerned. And he’s just one of many to come. Because if you can get away with this shit in Wisconsin, as mad as people were there, and if you can get away with this without the Democratic Party even really putting its ego on the line… Well, keep on going. To the sea, if necessary.

    I raised the image earlier of a Confederate general on his horse on a hill watching the Sherman’s Union soldiers raze the fields. Imagine now a woman, down there in the fields, her fields, looking up, and seeing that general on his horse, shrugging, saying, “I guess shit happens. Madame, you have my sympathy.”

    There was talk on CNN today with Democratic experts like Paul Begala addressing the issue of whether what happened today in Wisconsin would affect Obama in November. The somewhat strained consensus of the Democratic experts was, naw… Wisconsin ALWAYS votes Democratic in presidential elections.

    It votes Democratic because of unions and grass roots GOTV organizing. The money and effort that they DID NOT put into Wisconsin today would have gone to strengthening and shoring up that organization. You can be quite certain that the Republicans, who busted their asses on this election, built up their Wisconsin organization. That’s permanent asset-building. The Democratic Party saw no value in it.

    That’s why they won. That’s why we lost. Koch brothers, Citizen United: all of them are less important than you really think. You can’t win if your party doesn’t think it’s important enough to really try.

  • Moe Lane may have accomplished the best troll.
  • If you want to drink deep, deep droughts of liberal anger, denial, and self-delusion, then head on over to this Democratic Underground thread which is (as you might imagine) NSFW.

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    Wisconsinfreude

    Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

    You’ve probably heard that Governor Scott Walker easily won the Wisconsin recall election last night. Between now and when Walker was elected in 2010, the result of each election has been worse and worse for unions and their liberal Democratic Party allies.

    I may have a more comprehensive roundup of reactions later, but for now let’s enjoy the rich, zesty aroma of liberals going down in defeat in the battle they choose.

    First up, scoring a weepy 10 on the Drama Queen Schadenfreude scale, is this extremely pale recall supporter proclaiming how Walker’s victory is “the end of democracy”:

    How upset were Barrett’s liberal supporters? One of them was upset enough to slap Barrett, the candidate she was supporting, for conceding:

    Here’s DNCC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the gift that keeps giving to Republicans, on how no one can match their grassroots organization:

    Of course, now that Walker has won, liberals have graciously conceded to the will of the electorate. Ha, just kidding! They’re issuing death threats to Walker.

    And, of course, the inevitable Hitler parodies:

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