Can The Wisconsin Protests Start Turning Back The Tide?

Much of American politics is a sort of Kabuki play, with guerilla-warfare-like feints, attacks, and counterattacks. The events seem dire at the time, but often aren't, quite.

The events in Wisconsin are different, though: The Republicans went straight for the jugular. The events there have NOTHING to do with budget deficits, and EVERYTHING to do with breaking the Democratic Party:

Walker's proposal doesn't apply to all public sector unions in the state. Broadly speaking it targets unions that consistently support Democrats (teachers and other public employees) and exempts those that are often more friendly to Republican candidates (police and firefighters).

Everyone realizes this has nothing to do with the budget:

The latest out of Wisconsin is that the two big public employee unions say they're willing to accept the givebacks contained in Gov. Walker's budget. Apparently all of them. But they refuse to budge on their collective bargaining rights. They say this has been their position all along.

Apparently handing out power plants to rich friends is also in the cards:

[T]he department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state.

Enable Walker, and you enable corruption on a vast scale!

The French press sees better than anyone:

MADISON, Wisconsin — Republican attempts to disband public workers unions in Wisconsin and other key states are part of a broad strategy to undermine US President Barak Obama and his Democrats at the ballot box, analysts said.

Unions have been the biggest sources of financial and grass roots, get-out-the-vote organizational support for Democrats and have long been a target of business-backed Republicans.

...The move to bust public unions is part of a broader attempt "to bring us closer to a more permanent Republican majority," said Marjorie Hershey, a political science professor at Indiana University.

Republicans won a major victory last year when the Supreme Court overturned a ban on corporate spending in elections.

The flood of new money -- $190 million by conservative groups compared with $94 million from liberals -- helped propel Republicans to win back the House of Representatives and make major gains at the state level in November's mid-term election.

The state-level gains will have far-reaching implications as legislators undertake the once-a-decade task of redrawing political maps in accordance with new census figures, a highly partisan process.

In the winner-take-all, essentially two-party US political system, creating a district where just 55 percent of voters support one party is usually all it takes to guarantee a win.

...Curtailing collective bargaining rights for public workers unions will essentially cut them off at the knees and that will have significant consequences for Democrats, said John Brehm, a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

It's hard-to-believe some people don't see this as purely a partisan attack, and think that appeasing the Republicans will help in some way, but appeasment rarely works for very long.

Those Democratic legislators who left the state need to stay absolutely gone for as long as it takes!