These [recall] elections, arising from the heat generated by a single issue [union-busting], risk further dividing the electorate and giving rise to a perpetual campaign.Maybe the MJS editorialists missed it, but Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Republican Scott Fitzgerald went on Fox News to announce his party's policies were directed toward defeating Barack Obama in 2012.
That is, his party's policies that are supposed to benefit the people of Wisconsin, not members of the Electoral College from North Carolina.
So it's a bit late to complain about "a perpetual campaign" at this point.
In fact it's been a bit late for decades. Besides, the recalls may have initially arisen from a single issue,* but there's been plenty more presented through WISGOP shenanigans since then, and it's appropriate to hold these six Republican Senators accountable for them as well.
Why not?
The law doesn't prescribe any particular reason to recall elected officials. It simply provides "tools," as Governor Scott Walker** himself would say.
And of course the various Journal Communications, Inc. corporate organs have been mocking and downplaying opposition to Walker and his henchpeople for months, so the MJS's huffy stance comes as no surprise.
* An issue, by the way, that campaigning Republicans deliberately withheld from Wisconsin voters prior to the November 2010 election.
** Who became Milwaukee County Executive by dint of a recall election.
There is a certain inevitability to all of this and they are starting to sense that it is slipping away from them. On my constitutional around the neighborhood yesterday, I spied a fellow working in his yard, "Stand With Wisconsin" sign prominent in the window. I went over and asked him if he was ready for Walker's recall. He smiled grimly and said he was getting more ready by the day.
ReplyDeleteLike with the Senate recalls, they won't say how many signatures have been collected as they go. One day in January they will pull the semi around to the GAB and deliver a million. That is what happened in Ohio the other day - 231K needed and 1.3 million delivered.
This goof too.
ReplyDeletedeliberately withheld from Wisconsin voters
ReplyDeleteIt weren't no Reichstagsbrandverordnung, says the Church of the Savvy parish priest.
Ha. "It differs from political thought itself."
ReplyDeleteAnd this thing with "issues" as a bizarre theory of forms is a big epistemological pet peeve of mine.
ReplyDeleteThere is no such thing as the collective bargaining issue. It's an entirely different debate now than it would have been before last fall's election, and there's no separating it from all that has transpired. That's what makes stealth agendas so invidious.