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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Didn't Campaign on Union-Busting
Tweet Share on Facebook February 28, 2011 Comment (46)One defense Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his allies have conjured up in trying to explain that his union-busting is in fact something other than union-busting is the assertion that he is merely fulfilling campaign promises. “The simple matter is I campaigned on this all throughout the election,” he has said. Most national political reporters, not having actually covered the Wisconsin gubernatorial election, might be inclined to take the governor at his word. Fortunately for journalists and news-consumers alike, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel partners with the website PolitiFact, meaning that Wisconsin politics is under a greater an especially powerful microscope.
PolitiFact looked at Walker’s claim that his extreme power grab was just part of his campaign agenda. They rated it as “false.”
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The Big Myth in Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's Union-Busting Crusade
Tweet Share on Facebook February 28, 2011 Comment (64)The Battle of Madison, in addition to being about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s desire to cripple his state’s public sector unions, is also at least ostensibly about budgetary matters. Walker wants to get those nasty teachers and other government workers to foot more of the bill for their retirements, right? Well … wrong actually. And one of the worst kinds of wrong, a factual error so broadly accepted by the journalists covering the story that it distorts everyone’s understanding of it.
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Does Obama's Gay Marriage Reversal Set a Dangerous Precedent?
Tweet Share on Facebook February 26, 2011 Comment (31)I shudder to say this, but Newt Gingrich might have a point about the Obama administration’s announcement this week that it will no longer defend a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act. Granted that the law is offensive; what kind of precedent is Obama setting with this move?
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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Is Right in Being Wrong
Tweet Share on Facebook February 26, 2011 Comment (64)A friend of mine made a good point today: Let’s retire, or at least put a temporary moratorium on, phrases like ram through and cramming down the throat in relation to legislative acts. These phrases unfair imply illegitimacy in the process. The fact of the matter is that what’s going on in Wisconsin, for example, is an unhappy but legitimate exercise in representative government.
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Public Dislikes Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's Union Busting
Tweet Share on Facebook February 23, 2011 Comment (61)More bad polling news for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker—not to mention other conservative chief executives, like Ohio’s John Kasich and New Jersey’s Chris Christie, who seem determined to use state budget crises to smash public sector labor unions.
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Poll: Voters Oppose Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in Union Standoff
Tweet Share on Facebook February 22, 2011 Comment (72)Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has become an instant conservative darling and national figure with his standoff against his state’s public worker unions. But a new poll suggests his no-compromise, union-busting approach is not playing well in the historically progressive state.
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Bachmann, 'All In' for 2012, Wants Glenn Beck to Fix the Deficit
Tweet Share on Facebook February 22, 2011 Comment (10)Sounding an awful lot like a presidential candidate (“I’m in”), Minnesota GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann came up with a novel solution for the budget crisis: Let Glenn Beck figure it out.
It was one highlight in what the Minnesota Independent (h/t Washington Monthly) describes as “one of her most fiery stump speeches to date,” to a Republican group in South Carolina. Given that her normal standard is flame-thrower it's remarkable the Palmetto State is still standing.
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The Republicans' Fundamentalist Approach to Spending and Jobs
Tweet Share on Facebook February 21, 2011 Comment (16)We all know the aphorism that “it’s the economy, stupid.” I don’t think anyone would argue with that notion--that the biggest thing driving voters (especially at a time like this) is the state of the economy. Unfortunately the economy varies in the eye of the beholder.
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Poll: Birthers Now Make Up a Majority of Republican Primary Voters
Tweet Share on Facebook February 16, 2011 Comment (37)I'm starting to think that the Republican Party is actually going crazy. There are the South Dakotans who want to make the murder of an abortion provider "justifiable homicide;" there are legislators in a dozen different states trying to resurrect the long-dead, never-legitimate nullification doctrine; and there's the Virginia state lawmaker who wants the commonwealth to start minting its own money.
The latest evidence of fringe nuttiness infecting the Grand Old Party? A new survey from Public Policy Polling shows that a majority of likely Republican presidential primary voters are "birthers"--they believe that President Obama was born in another country.
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Obama Tax Deal Left GOP Without Jobs and Unemployment Answers
Tweet Share on Facebook February 10, 2011 Comment (8)President Obama caught a lot of flack, particularly from the left, for the tax deal he cut with Republicans in December, extending the Bush tax cuts in exchange for, among other things, an extension of unemployment benefits. Progressives accused Obama of caving to the right and while I disagreed on balance, it still remains to be seen how the repercussions from the deal play out in terms of future negotiations.
But one (perhaps unintended, perhaps intended) consequence seems to be emerging as Democrats start to hammer the jobs message: The deal seems to have taken away one of the GOP’s main talking points on the jobs and unemployment issue.
Robert Schlesinger
Robert Schlesinger is managing editor for opinion at U.S. News and World Report, overseeing all opinion editorial content. He is the author of "White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters." E-mail him at rschlesinger@usnews.com. Follow him on Twitter: @rschles.
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