We mentioned last night how instead of looking at nominees from the usual suspects, it might be time to go into our bullpen and start an until recently unknown Governor who is making waves in a traditionally liberal state – Scott Walker. Since I have little faith in Huckabee, Gingrich, Romney, Pawlentey or Palin beating The One (due to the powerful machine behind him and other reasons), it might be time to go for broke!
by John Podhoretz
For months now, Republicans have turned to each other and said, “Who’s the candidate?”
President Obama is vulnerable in 2012, clearly, but you can’t beat something with nothing, and right now, the GOP field looks pretty much like . . . nothing.
Who’ll have the stature to compete? Thanks to those Democratic lawmakers fleeing Wisconsin and Indiana to frustrate the democratic process they swore an oath to uphold, we may have an answer.
They, and the demonstrators screaming about the governors seeking cuts in the absurdly generous benefits granted to public-sector workers, have created a national stage on which a new and dynamic candidate can emerge.
The governors (and perhaps the House members) who are taking on these battles are fighting the fight of the GOP future, and one of them now seems certain to take the mantle of 2012.
Judging from his extraordinarily effective speech last night, that governor could be Wisconsin’s Scott Walker.
For a week, Walker’s wilder opponents have dared to compare him to Hitler and Mubarak. The man who delivered last night’s “fireside chat” sounded serious, reasonable, and anything but incendiary.
He made a canny decision to pitch his opening at union workers who aren’t calling in sick, as the teachers in Wisconsin shamefully are. He thanked all “who showed up for work today,” adding, “we all respect the work you do.”
He explained that his controversial bill — which would require state employees to defray some costs of their health-care and pension benefits — would still provide them with a deal most private-sector workers in the state would die for.
Walker is going to win or lose his battle on two issues. He needs to convince Wisconsin’s voters that “the legislation I’ve put forward is about one thing. It’s about balancing our budget now — and in the future.” He made a very strong case.
But even more important politically is his criticism of the lawmakers who fled the state because they knew if they stayed in Madison, the bill he wanted would pass.
“Whether we like the outcome or not, our democratic institutions call for us to participate,” he said. “That is why I am asking the missing senators to come back to work. Do the job you were elected to do. You don’t have to like the outcome, or even vote yes, but as part of the world’s greatest democracy, you should be here.”
If they fail to act, he said, the harsh consequences in the form of forced layoffs would be their responsibility.
[…]
Read the rest: Wisconsin kid is GOP’s sudden White House star
Michelle Malkin heaps ridicule on the cowardly Democrats who fled from their responsibilities.
by Michelle Malkin
First lady Michelle Obama said, “Let’s Move!” Who knew Democratic politicians in Wisconsin and Indiana would take her literally?
Faced with stifling debt, bloated pensions, and intractable government unions, liberal Midwestern legislators have fled those states — paralyzing Republican fiscal-reform efforts. Like Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin and his band of quivering knights, these elected officials have only one plan when confronted with political hardship or economic peril: Run away, run away, run away.
Scores of Fleebagger Democrats are now in hiding in neighboring Illinois, the nation’s sanctuary for political crooks and corruptocrats. Soon, area hotels will be announcing a special discount rate for card-carrying FleePAC winter convention registrants. Question: Will the White House count the economic stimulus from the mass Democratic exodus to Illinois as jobs “saved” or “created”? More important question: How much are taxpayers being charged for these obstructionist vacations?
Voters have spoken: In Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and across the heartland, they put Republican adults in charge of cleaning up profligate Democrat-engineered messes. Instead of defending their same old tax-hiking, union-protecting, spending-addicted ways, Democrats are crossing their state borders into big-government sanctuary zones — screaming “la, la, la, we can’t hear you” all the way.
Wisconsin Democrats warned that their delinquent members — evading state troopers and literally phoning it in — could be gone “for weeks” to prevent a quorum on GOP governor Scott Walker’s modest plan to increase public union workers’ health insurance and pension contributions, end the compulsory union-dues racket, and rein in collective-bargaining powers run amok.
Big Labor insists its intransigence isn’t about money, but about “rights.” But the dispute is about nothing but money and power — the union’s power to dictate and limit its members’ health-insurance choices to a lucrative union-run plan, for example, which adds nearly $70 million in unnecessary taxpayer costs.
On Tuesday, only three of 40 House Democrats in Indiana showed up for legislative debate on a similar bill to end forced unionism and join 22 other “right to work” states. Hoosier media reported that some of the fugitive pols may be headed to Kentucky in addition to President Obama’s old political stomping grounds.
The White House and Beltway Democrats have paved the way for subverting deliberative democracy, of course. If only Republicans in Wisconsin and Indiana had followed the Obama/Pelosi/Reid model and rammed their behind-closed-doors-crafted legislative agenda through in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, the Fleebaggers wouldn’t be on the lam today. But GOP legislators just don’t roll that way. It’s Democrats who cut and run — abroad in wartime and at home in crisis.
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Read the rest Fleebaggers
Tags: John Podhoretz
