I think that Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin may have overreached in his efforts to get Wisconsin’s budget under control. It appears that some of his efforts to cut back on collective bargaining rights for public employees may have caused more public relations harm than it has achieved policy good. Things like requiring public employees to contribute more to their pensions and their health care costs seem to have public support, but when it comes to limiting bargaining rights, requiring annual recertification votes, etc., polls indicate the Republicans are, at this point, losing the battle.
I don’t know if this is because voters disagree with Governor Walker’s position or because the Democrats/public employee unions have done a better job of publicizing their side of the issue – and demonizing the Republicans’ side. The public employee unions have effectively said that they had already agreed to pay more for their pensions and health care, so there was no need for what Governor Walker was doing.
On the other hand, one wonders if the unions would have been so agreeable on increasing their pension and health care contributions, if the governor had not also raised the collective bargaining issues. Did the unions give in on the pension/benefits questions because the governor raised the other issues and they, the unions, decided they would look better fighting back on the bargaining-related questions if they had already agreed to contribute more for their pensions and health care? Also, one wonders how the public would feel if it was made clear that one of the biggest issues for the unions, or at least for the union leadership, is Governor Walker’s proposal to have the state stop collecting dues for the unions. That would be a big blow to the unions, but would the public see it as terrible?
In any case, Republicans need to review both their PR strategy and their positions on specific issues so that they do not wind up losing support they need for other, more important issues.
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Back on March 11, I talked about the people in Wisconsin being “nice”. Well, that may not be as true as I thought. Consider these excerpts from “Wisconsin Rifts Run Deep,” a recent article in The Wall Street Journal*:
“The fifth round of the fight Kathy and Stephen Scaffidi have been having for weeks started Tuesday evening in this Milwaukee suburb when Chris Larson's name came up.
Mr. Larson isn't an old boyfriend or a drinking buddy, but the couple's state senator. Three weeks ago, he and 13 other Democratic senators fled to Illinois in an effort to prevent Republicans from passing a bill pushed by Gov. Scott Walker to curtail collective-bargaining rights for public union employees.
Ms. Scaffidi, a schoolteacher, considers Mr. Larson a hero. Her husband, a manager at a media-rating company, thinks the senator is a coward.
‘How can you be saying what you're saying when you're married to a teacher?’ Ms. Scaffidi recalled yelling at her husband in their living room.
‘You've got to look at the big picture!’ Mr. Scaffidi shouted back. …
Sitting in the Alterra coffee shop this week near Mr. Walker's home in Wauwatosa, Leonard Noll [owner of a plastics manufacturing company] said he hadn't spoken to his older sister [a teacher] since late last year. …
Carla Goetsch-Arnold, 50, an urban farmer, said she was in her doctor's office reading a Twitter feed from her Democratic representative to her 21-year-old daughter when two other people in the waiting room rolled their eyes.
‘They said if the Democrats could get their act together, we wouldn't have to play hardball with them,’ she said. ‘I couldn't believe it. We Democrats are polite people, and Republicans are so divisive.’
Mr. [sic] Goetsch-Arnold said she recently de-friended about 30 Facebook friends because of their views of the Wisconsin situation. …
In the newsroom of Third Coast Digest, a Milwaukee website about local arts, culture and politics, arguments between liberals and conservatives have grown so heated that the advertising director sent the publisher an email saying he didn't think he could come to work because he was so angry. …
A few hundred miles north in Two Rivers, near Green Bay, a student had a T-shirt made at a local shop that said ‘Scott Walker My Hero’ on the front.
The shop owner, former union member David Van Ginkel, said he later received an email from the local teachers union president implying his shop might not get further business from the schools. …”
James Taranto at “Best of the Web Today” reported on a threat made against Ann Althouse, a University of Wisconsin law professor and incredibly prolific blogger, and her husband:
"Yesterday she [Ms. Althouse] posted a link to a bizarre threat against her and hubby Laurence Meade that was posted on Scribd.com:
‘We will hang up wanted posters of you everywhere you like to go. We will picket on public property as close to your house as we can every day. We will harrass the ever loving sh--out of you all the time. . . . Because we aren't anti-social, life-denying, world-sterilizing pieces of human garbage like the two of you. WE WILL F--- YOU UP.’”
I heard another report about an advocacy group in Wisconsin apparently switching bank accounts because the one it had been using had contributed to a candidate on the other side. (Sort of a Dixie Chicks-situation.)
In other words, it appears that “Wisconsin nice” may be turning into “Wisconsin not-so-nice”.
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* Douglas Belkin and Kris Maher, “Wisconsin Rifts Run Deep,” The Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2011.
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