What a difference 300,000 protesters makes

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, February 12, 2011:

Restoring Wisconsin to fiscal health is not for the squeamish. The medicine is going to be bitter. Gov. Scott Walker's proposals to strip state employee unions of much of their bargaining power illustrates just how bitter.

But Walker is right to do this. He must insist that state workers pay a bigger share of their benefits. And he's right to take steps to compel them to do so.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, February 28, 2001:

Gov. Scott Walker's budget-repair bill is flawed. We support the governor's aim to rein in labor costs but cannot support this bill as written. . . .

But no matter how deep the budget hole, Walker and his Republican allies in the Legislature were wrong to try to bust public-employee unions. Workers have a fundamental right to organize, even when it's inconvenient for the rest of us.

In the latter editorial, the authors criticize as "reckless" the 14 Democratic State Senators for retreating to Illinois to avoid forming the quorum required to pass the so-called budget repair bill. But had it not been for the action of those 14, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wouldn't even be in the position of reconsidering its former wholesale endorsement for Gov. Scott Walker's union-busting proposals.*

So shouldn't it be thanking the 14, or even praising them?

Meanwhile at the National Review Online, Wisconsin Policy Research Institute "senior fellow" Christian Schneider asks himself, "Have the Madison protests made a difference?" and answers himself, "No."

At least the Journal-Sentinel is paying attention, and not creepily leering over "impressionable college girls" under the Capitol dome.

Maybe he's why they were bolting the windows shut there today.

* It also endorsed him for governor in the first place. The local daily hasn't yet gone so far as to enunciate the topsy turvy buyers' remorse reflected in the latest Public Policy Polling survey (.pdf; 5 pgs.).

That could be next.