John Terbush writes at TPM that three Republican governors — Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Ohio’s John Kasich, and Michigan’s Rick Snyder — have seen their approval ratings drop significantly after pursuing aggressively anti-union policies.
However, Evan McMorris-Santoro writes at TPM that the union busters of the Right are not taking a hint. They’re attacking Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana for not being anti-union enough. Daniels is as anti-union as they come, but his presidential ambitions may not be willing to fall on a sword for the cause, so to speak.
Unrelated great snark: This Just In: FOX News Discovers War Cost Money
It appears to me that the repugs are going way out on a limb thats getting shakier as they go. G.W would be proud. They are going to put their political careers on the line to try and bust the unions, and this provesw beyond a shadow of a doubt that they will do any thing it takes to break the unions in this country, but it ain’t gonnahappen.
It is easy to expect people to use common sense and to REMEMBER what was done to them by the GOP. But look– just 3 years post-W– a Republican Congress. I would have thought it would have taken longer to erase his memory.
Walker thought he was helping the GOP by ending union money in Wisconsin elections. He didn’t consider the fact that state employees are personally connected to lots of people who (used to) vote Republican. I don’t think the guy understands simple human connections and loyalties like friendship and family.
Speaking of Scott Walker, this landed in my email inbox today (from the DailyKos mailing list)…
Wisconsin Republicans say the state is too broke to pay for teachers, but they just gave the 26-year-old mistress of a union-busting Republican Senator a state job with a fat raise. It’s a classic Republican scandal filled with hypocrisy, cronyism, and their special version of “family values.”
I have a feeling that you won’t hear this story on Fox News, or Rush Limbaugh.
Here’s the story. Last year, Wisconsin Republican state Senator Randy Hopper left his wife to live with a young Republican political operative. Last month, as Governor Scott Walker unveiled legislation calling for deep cuts in state workers’ salaries and collective bargaining rights, Hopper’s mistress was hired by the state on the advice of Scott Walker’s cabinet as a “communications liaison.” Further, her salary is 35% higher than her predecessor’s.
Candide…That sounds a little like the Monica Goodling story except Monica was a virtuous Christian girl who saved herself for marriage.
Walker has COMPLETELY locked down the capitol, no singing, no chanting, no signs (not kidding) and I’m sure if he felt he needed to, no kite flying a la the Taliban. Everyday something else comes out of the repubs in Madison where you just shake your head and wonder, “Why would they do that”. It’s because they can’t help themselves; they just can’t. Even in the wake of plummeting approval ratings and 100K demonstrators, they just can’t help themselves. I think a lot of it comes from ONLY listening to the echo chamber of Fox and hate radio. Nothing else pierces in and they are slapped on the back by these people, they think they are impenetrable.
buckyblue …They practice juggernaut politics because they pay no penalty from the electorate. Bush and his gang of Repug cretins taught them all work in unison to achieve the goals of the party, and not to get weak kneed in the face of public outcries. Look at our situation in Iraq…We have the largest and most expensive embassy the world has ever seen, and we have 50,000 troops permanently garrisoned exactly like what was set out for in the Project for the New American Century..all at a cost over a trillion dollars and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lives, but at political cost of only sitting out one election cycle. A respite is their penalty!
Walker does what he does because he knows there won’t be a price to be paid for his actions. Low poll numbers are meaningless until the opposition can translate them into action with a successful recall vote.
These guys don’t care about re-election. They’ll be taken care of just fine, no matter what. It would be nice if they could con the public into voting for them again – and of course they’ll try, that’s the nature of politics – but they measure their success in terms of how far they advance the oligarchs’ agenda, not in terms of opinion polls. Everything – including winning re-election – should be seen in that light.
Speaking of my governor in the bunch, I am surprised Kasich hasn’t proposed leasing the Ohio Turnpike like Mitch Daniels did with the Indiana Toll Road. I did not vote for Kasich, and felt Ted Strickland was a much better candidate. We don’t appear to have recall provisions, so we may be stuck with Kasich for 4 more years, if we can survive that long.
This is off topic, but it is fairly early in the morning and my brain is waiting for the coffee to wake it.
The person who comes to mind is Charles Trevelyan, who was above all a champion of the free market. He was a heartless bastard, who remarked on the Irish potato famine, something to the effect that, “Famines are a way of disposing of excess population.” I am sure you are all familiar with his role in the death and displacement of so many Irish souls. I am surprised that the Randoids haven’t elevated him to the pantheon of free market saints. He was, after all, “Randy” before there was a Rand. Were he alive today, he’d be leading the pack of Republican presidential contenders. He had all the right talking points, free markets, the casualties of ‘progress” are lazy and unproductive (happened to be Irish at the time, but any minority will do), God loves the free market, etc.
Well, I guess I should thank him, my mother’s family might not have come over and her part of my DNA would be laying about in the former “Celtic Tiger” waiting for the dole to run out. At least, there would be some catchy tunes to listen to.
By the way, Simon Schama’s “History of Britain” series has a pretty good summation of this era. It’s the penultimate episode.
If the unions are ruined, the middle class will shrink and the oligarchy will fully reveal itself. Rand and Von Mises both favored free markets over democracy. What sort of democracy will we have when poor voters are surpressed even more and the electorate is so inflamed with misinformation, that they really have no idea what they are voting for? What sort of economy, when the middle class, which was the “goose that laid the golden egg” of American capitalism has had their wages reduced, their bargaining rights taken and their pensions stolen? To Libertarians, I suppose, this would be some bright new future, where their obvious talents would be recognized. Of course, if the market contracts, there won’t be so many cushy “wingnut welfare” opportunities, but hey, competition drives innovation, doesn’t it?
Yeah, they’ll always have Wingnut Welfare to fall back on.
But don’t you worry, Goatherd, even if the markets contract, they’ll alway have a place for those who moved the money up, or out.
I just don’t think I’ll see Tucker Carlson on the unemployment line anytime soon. Same goes for Walker, Kasich, Snyder, Scott (FL), or LaPage (Maine) – “The Fib Five.”
Oh, but khughes, Kasich HAS proposed leasing the Ohio Turnpike. He’s also selling five state-owned prisons to private companies, who conveniently are also big contributors to his campaign. He’s also a union buster against collective bargaining, killed light rail plans and sent the money back, and is in the process of selling state-run liquor stores to private owners. The funds from the liquor stores will now be put into a state account and managed by Kasich’s office. No possible problems with that arrangement!
Ohio voters have just now noticed that their Corporate Bank Stooge Kasich may not be the governor they were hoping for, someone who would show up Strickland and cut taxes. Instead, he’s proven that he’s killing off the money for the poor and needy in Ohio and making it impossible for anyone else to get ahead.
It’s scary, no hyperbole here.
Swami: you’re exactly right. Hopefully recalls will send a message that you can’t do what ever you want and not pay a price.
donnah,
Sorry to hear that you live there.
As I said earlier, a lot of voters were taken in in 2010 by candidates lying about what their priorites would be (Jobs, jobs, jobs!). Walker, Kasich, Snyder, Scott, and LaPage – “The Fib Five†were some of the ones running for Governor. And then look at all of the Congresspeople adn Senators.
Hang in there.
And ‘rouse’ that ‘rabble!’
donnah,
“Sorry to hear that you live there.”
God, that came out awful. I didn’t mean it like that. I hope you know what I meant was that I’m sorry you and the people there are having to face what you’re facing.
That’s okay I know how you meant it. 😉
I was born here in SW Ohio and have lived here 53 years. It hasn’t always been perfect, but it’s never been this bad. And what scares me is that it will only go downhill from here.