The public-employee unions and their allies in the Democratic Party just lost again in Wisconsin — a battleground of their choosing. And despite their trashing of almost every democratic norm.
It’s been a long nine months in the Badger State.
After capturing the governorship and both houses of the Legislature last fall, Republicans moved to make good on their campaign promise to close the state’s $3.1 billion shortfall with a controversial “budget repair” bill that stripped most public unions of collective-bargaining privileges.
Screaming that the sky was falling, the public-sector unions — a key Democratic constituency — tried repeatedly to frustrate the voters’ will. They flooded the state capitol with squadrons of goons to try to intimidate lawmakers from passing Gov. Scott Walker’s bill. Then 14 Democratic state senators decamped to Illinois, exploiting parliamentary rules that required a quorum to pass the bill. But Republicans used another a parliamentary maneuver to pass the bill without them.
Then they lost in court — and again at the polls when they sought to deny re-election to a conservative state Supreme Court justice so as to reverse that decsion.
Finally, on Tuesday, the prolonged farce came to end with the Democrats’ failure to regain control of the state Senate via recall elections. To grab the majority, they needed to win three of the six GOP seats on the ballot, but they only nabbed two.
And it wasn’t really that close. Republicans won 53 percent of the day’s vote. Of the two seats they lost, one was in a heavily Democratic district and the other belonged to Randy Hopper, who had scandalized his constituents by leaving his wife for a 25-year-old capitol staffer and moving out of his district.
And two Democratic state senators face their own recall elections next Tuesday, with one considered extremely vulnerable. When the smoke clears, the status quo ante may be back in force, with the Republicans holding a 19-to-14 Senate majority.
Meanwhile, millions of dollars have been wasted, tempers inflamed and the very nature of representative democracy threatened — and for what?
Other states — including deep-blue Massachusetts and moderate Ohio — this year instituted similar rollbacks without the drama. The left simply chose Wisconsin as the best place to make its last stand against the tide of fiscal sanity that is now sweeping the nation.
Yet nothing worked, from the senators’ flight to politicizing what was supposed to be a non-partisan judicial election to calling for a “do-over” recall election less than a year after voters had spoken.
This is no way to run a railroad, and an even worse way to run a state or a country. We have constitutionally mandated elections at prescribed intervals for a reason — to allow time for political passions to cool and allow the legislative process to work.
But the unions couldn’t accept that and so waged war on democracy. They thought victory over Gov. Walker’s initiatives would send a chilling signal to politicians in other states: If you mess with us, we’ll mess you up.
Oops.
Is there occasional buyer’s remorse after an election? Of course — the nation is going through a massive case of it right now, as President Obama flails helplessly at the sinking economy and seems utterly incapable of leadership. Were a presidential election to be held today, he would likely lose in a landslide. But that doesn’t mean he should be recalled tomorrow.
The punch line: Wisconsin’s local governments are already seeing their balance sheets turn around. Freed from collective bargaining over health care, Milwaukee alone will save up to $36 million next year — and, even with cuts in state aid, come out millions ahead.
Turns out the sky really did fall — on the public unions and their pals.