From
The Rachel Maddow Show, 2/21/11 (emphasis mine):
"...So the last time Scott Walker did something like this, it is desperation to get rid of union employees, he overestimated how much money it would save, and allowed for a foreign based butt vodka **94** person in charge of city hall.
Woo hoo, that's Wisconsin's new governor. That's where he comes from.
The play book here is clear: The priority is to get rid of the unions, to break them up. The pretext to do that is financial, but it is clear that it is just a pretext.
The unions at the center of this fight offered to the governor, they said they would essentially give him all the financial concessions he said he wanted. But he said no to that. He doesn't want the financial concessions. He wants to strip them of their union rights or he wants nothing.
Finances are just a pretext.
Among the most expensive benefit package, the state pays for any union employees, are the ones for the unions that supported Walker when he ran for governor. Also happen to be the only ones exempted from his union stripping plan.
If this was really about money, those would be the first ones on the chopping block, but it is not all about money.
Finances are just a pretext.In the midst of the supposed budget deficit emergency that makes necessary this dramatic anti-union bill, the governor supported adding about $140 million to the state's deficit, when he passed a bunch of tax cuts without paying for them.
Finances are just a pretext.
When governor Chris Christie of New Jersey announces he needs to do the same because of his budget crisis, he is expected to announce it tomorrow, and when John Kasich of Ohio moves to do it in his state because of budget crisis, it will be a pretext in those cases, too.
Republicans understand that the business interests that support them have always wanted to get rid of unions, as it has always been and as it will always be. But more directly, Republicans understand sources of Democratic political power, and they understand sources of Democratic political power well enough to be focused across the country on how they can destroy those institutions. Corporations support Republicans. They made donations 93% Republican. But the people who cash paychecks instead of sign them, the people that work for companies instead of own the companies, actual humans instead of conglomerates, labor unions, those groups tend to support Democratic causes.
Here again, at the top ten big money contributors in last year's elections, seven of the top ten are right wing.
The only three that are not are unions.Republicans understand enough about the sources of Democratic political power to want to destroy the institutions that make it possible for democrats to compete in elections. The question is whether or not Democrats understand the sources of their political power well enough to defend those institutions against Republican attacks.
Republicans, ideologically speaking, like to talk smack about the government. Government is the problem.
Ronald Reagan: "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government
is the problem."
"Government is the problem." That's always the great awkwardness at the heart of Republicans campaigning for political office.
If you don't like government so much, if you think that government is the problem, why do you want to be in charge of it?But there are two things that Republicans really like about having government power.
One is the opportunity to take things government does and give them to private companies that do it instead. (Hello you there in the coconut bra.) The other thing they have passion for using public policy to attack and dismantle institutions that support Democrats electorally.
In case it wasn't crystal clear enough that's what's going on in Wisconsin, that that's what explains why 70,000 are in the streets of Madison this weekend, in case it wasn't clear enough, when the Republicans in Wisconsin announced today what they're going to do while the Democrats are gone and out of state, denying the senate the quorum needed to vote on the union busting thing, guess what the Republicans are going to do while the Democrats are away? Guess what they are going to do next?
A bill to make it harder to register to vote in Wisconsin.
You know, weirdly, we used this last week as an example of the kinds of issues that Republicans do this on. As an example, the way they use public policy for partisan ends, to benefit their own party and hurt Democrats, registering new voters has long been a great source of Democratic electoral strength.
Why is that?
Because young voters, and people that haven't voted before, do tend to vote Democratic.
So if Republicans can make it hard to register to vote, they can take away one of the ways that Democrats win in elections.
If you make it harder to register to vote, you make it harder for Democrats to win elections.
Republicans understand what institutions help Democrats win elections and they are using public policy to dismantle those things, for partisan purposes. So while they are waiting to destroy the unions in say Wisconsin, in the meantime, while they are waiting to do that, they will use their time to destroy voter registration drives.
Republicans understand Democrats well enough to know what to attack in order to weaken Democrats. The question now is do Democrats understand their own institutions and their own strengths well enough to know that they ought to be defending them...."
(full video)