First, let’s start it all off with the happy stuff. Tuesday night’s election results in Wisconsin are definitely good enough to unleash the baby elephants.
On the Democrat planet of Perpetual Spin, last night’s election had already taken on several dozen separate and distinct connotations. It went from being a referendum on the, “fringe right wing elements,” that had supposedly taken over the Republican Party to being, “not really indicative of anything at all,” to being a sign of, “just how unfair life is that Republicans are able to raise campaign funds.” So, as a public service of providing schadenfreude whenever that opportunity exists, please enjoy this little gem thoughtfully provided by CNN.
What the whining paid union thug in the video doesn’t say is that while there was a wide disparity in cash raised by the candidates themselves, there was also a wide disparity in the amount of money spent by super Pacs. The unions poured a ton of money into all of their shenanigans in Wisconsin which more than evened the spending playing field. Not to mention that this whole exercise in futility was their idea in the first place. We’ll get back to that topic in a moment.
After all of the recounts, the posturing and the hand wringing, what exactly was accomplished here? They did manage to pick up one seat in the Wisconsin State Senate last night but, and this one is truly funny, the Senate will not be meeting in session until after that particular seat is up for reelection again this November. You’ve read that correctly, John Lehman won a contest which will not actually see him take his oath of office, unless he is reelected this fall. That is the true fitting symbol of what the unions accomplished in Wisconsin.
For all of the constant bleating about how Democracy was not being served by a Republican having the temerity to actually win an election in Wisconsin, the political left has been going full tilt in their attempt to subvert the will of the people of that state to not be held hostage any longer. Scott Walker campaigned on a platform based entirely on balancing his state’s budget and reigning in the public sector unions which were bleeding the state dry. In 2010, he won a narrow victory, but it was wide enough to make it clear that a majority of Wisconsin’s citizens were sick of it.
When Scott Walker and his newly elected Republican majority in both Houses of the Wisconsin Legislature began keeping their campaign promises, all heck broke lose in the Badger State. Upon the realization that the taxpayer funded gravy train was coming to an end, the national unions, led by the usual suspects, bused in tens of thousands of paid agitators to lay siege to the Wisconsin Capitol. Riots erupted as Scott Walker and his team pressed forward with his agenda, upon which he had previously campaigned and won his job.
The union chieftains realized quickly that their source of bribe money, extortion profits, payoffs, and ill gotten gains was about to be seriously threatened. They retaliated with recall drives, and then followed through on those threats. So far, 10 Republican Senators, the Governor, The Lieutenant Governor, and one Supreme Court Justice have faced the wrath of the national organized labor machine. (David Prosser faced what has to be a record in terms of money spent for his reelection bid to defeat Joann Kloppenberg to retain his position on Wisconsin’s high court.) During the entire process, charges of the Walker team subverting the democratic process were leveled by the very people who were seeking to subvert the clearly expressed wishes of the people they were claiming to represent.
Last night, the good people of Wisconsin have restated, and by an even larger margin this time around, that they want Scott Walker to keep doing exactly what he is doing. As it turns out, they like the idea of not being forced to join a union, and would rather keep the freedom to not join one. They like the idea of their state’s budget being balanced and their elected leaders showing some signs of understanding that the wealth of the state is finite. They like the idea of the public sector unions not wielding the actual levers of power, but having control of those levers returned to the citizens of the state instead. Go figure.
How bad is this one for organized labor? They spent a ton of cash on this. I don’t know if they went all in, but they bet much more than they should have. Last fall, they won this battle in Ohio, Indiana was more of a tie, (largely due to Mitch Daniels being a weak fish,) but in New Jersey and Wisconsin, they lost, and lost big. After 10 State Senate Recalls, the unions hold a temporary 1 seat margin in one house of the Wisconsin legislative branch, which will not be in session until after the coming November elections when 17 of the 33 seats are to be decided all over again, including the one they just picked off. A perfect tribute for their efforts to thwart the will of the people. I guess that, “this is what democracy looks like.”
I don’t know if this actually points to any national implications, team Obama will definitely say that it means nothing. I’m sure that plenty of Conservative pundits will be piling on today touting the, “it means everything,” meme. I can tell you for sure one thing it does mean, and that is this. After decades of Democrats running things in Wisconsin, the people there are ready to give Republicans a chance, and after two years of them living up to their promises, they would like to keep them in charge.
It’s the what happens next that I am interested in now. Will the national labor unions let the good people of Wisconsin be, or will they attempt to subvert their wishes once again? Yesterday I had read in several places that they had a whole day of protests planned for today, knowing already that they were going down in flames. Few things in nature are as dangerous as a wounded animal, and make no mistakes about it, organized labor has been wounded by Wisconsin, one of their true strong holds in America. I do not believe that we have heard the last of them, but with the public spigots turned off, their bark will surely surpass their bite at some point in the future.
Look for Wisconsin to become a right to work state in 2013. Congratulations to you guys, and enjoy your status of becoming one of the stronger states economically speaking, you’ve earned it.
Cross Posted at Musings of a Mad Conservative.
Tags: Gov. Scott Walker
