After his party's "shellacking" in November, President Obama pledged to usher in a new era of bipartisan cooperation. He said he got the message that the American people want both sides to work together. (Actually, that wasn't the message of the election. The message was to strip the Democrats of as much power as possible and install Republicans as the majority in the House and with bigger numbers in the Senate to stop the Obama agenda. It wasn't about getting "both sides to work together." It was about stopping one side dead in its tracks. But Obama spun it as the people's desire to see both parties work together to solve problems. Actually, his party has created and compounded most of those problems, and the American people want the Democrats to cease and desist---and they do not want the Republicans working together with the Democrats in any way, shape, or form, unless it's in full service to the limited government, big spending cuts agenda.)
After the Tucson shooting, when his side went wild blaming conservative "talk" and the "tone" of political discourse for the actions of a lone, deranged maniac, Obama gave a speech extolling the virtues of "civility." He urged a change in "tone." He was, as he always is, focusing us on appearances. That's his way of distracting us from the actual substance of policy debates, because in a center-right nation, liberalism constantly loses those debates. If you're focused on "tone," you're not focused on the vast philosophical differences that separate the right from the left on policy. You're also not focused on the fact that the left's "solutions" over the past two years---ever-greater spending, government intervention in nearly every facet of the economy, brand-new massive entitlements---have failed. Utterly. That's why he wants you focused on "tone."
Well, it didn't take long for the left to throw "tone" right out the window. Wisconsin, like most other states, is broke. There is no money. The new Republican governor, Scott Walker, proposed a bill to take on the unions head-on. The bill would strip most government workers of collective bargaining rights. Ohio Governor John Kasich has proposed the same thing, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has taken on the powerful state teachers' union and hasn't backed down. Public sector unions are bankrupting this country. Between ever-higher wages and huge negotiated pension and benefits packages, the costs of public workers are pushing states over the edge. These governors have no choice. They've got to bust the unions, renegotiate the union contracts, and move forward with far less generous packages for public employees. It's so bad that even liberal governors of liberal states are acknowledging the need to move in this direction. See: California's governor Jerry Brown and New York's governor Andrew Cuomo. States (like the federal and local governments) simply cannot go on like this. There is no money.
Governor Walker needs to put his state's fiscal house in order. That requires steep spending cuts. The unions don't like it. Neither do their allies in the Democrat party. Lucky for them, those allies go all the way up to the President. Obama called the bill "an assault on unions." ("Assault?" Really? I thought words that referenced violence were a big no-no after Tucson.) His 2008 campaign arm, Organizing for America, is orchestrating the big rallies against the bill in Madison. It's busy coordinating the protests and busing in union members from all over the place. They sound very Muslim Brotherhood, don't they? Remember: the Muslim Brothers were the original community organizers.
The protesters are carrying signs equating Governor Walker with Hitler and Mussolini as they hoisted placards saying "Death to Tyrants." (So much for a change in "tone.") Over 1000 teachers called in "sick" in order to demonstrate against the cuts. (They so need to be fired, a la the air traffic controllers fired by President Reagan for going on strike. Critical public employees pulling labor stunts like this? You're gone.)
Wisconsin's governor is responding to a clear and present danger: debt that is threatening to swallow the state. He must take serious actions. The public union gravy train is over, not just there, but everywhere. The money is gone, and the party is over.
Instead of literally fleeing the state to escape voting on the bill, Wisconsin Democrat state senators should have manned up: stay and vote against the bill, if that's what they believed, or vote for it and help their state back to fiscal health.
The President, his campaign arm, and the Democratic National Committee have joined this battle on the side of the unions and against the vast majority of the American people. I hope the Republicans see it clearly. All that Democrat talk about "changing the tone" and "working together" was pure B.S.
Game on.
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