Based on Twitter reaction, I’m going to guess no. But he’s speaking rhetorically here, of course. The point isn’t to ask for an apology that’ll never come, it’s to remind the left that they were the ones who framed this as an argument over who really speaks for “the people.” Last night, that argument was finally settled.
This is what democracy looks like:
This rhetoric wasn’t just hyperbolic. It was strategically suicidal. The unions and their various apologists whipped progressive Wisconsin into such a frenzy — falsely claiming, for example, that Walker was about to unleash the National Guard — that the anti-Walker forces could no longer perceive political reality…
It turns out that noisy demonstrations, swollen by such people’s tribunes as the University of Wisconsin teaching assistants union, do not represent public opinion in the state as a whole. The purported tyrant of Madison actually enjoyed the support of a solid majority of Wisconsinites — just as he did in November 2010, when he was first elected. The unions’ claim to represent the “people” and the “middle class” stands exposed as propaganda. Even a third of voters who live in union-member households backed Walker.
But Walker bought the election with corporate money from out of state! Of all the excuses being offered today, this is the most pathetic. Of course Walker exploited existing state campaign-finance law to raise as much money as possible wherever he could. What the heck did his opponents expect him to do? Unilaterally disarm?…
But Walker’s critics were right about one thing: democracy was at issue in this struggle. What they got wrong is which side was actually upholding democratic values.
Follow the link to see what he means by that last bit. Spoiler alert: He’s in sync with Mickey Kaus, another Democrat who’s squeamish about the power of public employee unions because they’re a cancer on the progressive paradigm of clean, efficient, effective government. If you’re a believer in using state power to do good, then you probably don’t want to vote for letting the state get captured by union rent-seekers who’ll bleed it of ever larger amounts of tax revenue. If, however, you believe that the state can only do good with Democrats in office and that the only way to keep Democrats in office is to make sure PEUs keep them flush with kickbacks in the form of campaign donations, then yeah, obviously Scott Walker is Hitler. The Democratic vote last night was transparently all about making sure that a key client can continue to raid the public treasury so that some of their take can continue to be diverted to left-wing candidates. That’s the price they’re willing to pay for, ahem, “clean, effective, efficient government.”
Lane makes an excellent point too about the strategic propulsion of the left’s anti-Walker hyperbole. Don’t overlook that as an answer to the question befuddling some Dems today about why they went ahead with this dumb recall in the first place. How could they have refused? They had a big Two Minutes Hate outside the capitol last year that was their first show of strength since getting wiped out in the midterms. They convinced themselves that they were dealing with the Grim Reaper of the blue social model even though Walker’s reforms were relatively mild and probably won’t be followed with any further dramatic moves (at least in the near term). So they decided they had to beat him, and they failed, and now they’ve built him up to the point where he kind of is the Grim Reaper of the blue social model — symbolically, as an example to other fiscal conservatives of what’s possible in an America that’s watching Greece with dread. They sailed a sea of venom all the way to defeat. No wonder there’s so much schadenfreude on the right today.
Via the Daily Caller, here’s a little man-on-the-street tribute to cancer survivor — and now recall survivor — Rebecca Kleefisch. Content warning.
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