Democracy in Wisconsin

Governor Scott Walker has won his legislative battle with Wisconsin Democrats and protesters. By stripping out the spending provisions from his controversial bill, the GOP could pass it without the missing Senate Democrats. The bill will eliminate most collective bargaining for most of Wisconsin's public employees.

Republicans complained bitterly about the Badger 14, the Wisconsin Senators who fled the state in order to deny Republicans a quorum. Conservatives have been calling the 14 Senators fleebaggers, which is several kinds of clever. I have defended the Badger 14 and I do so here again. Fleeing or hiding to prevent a quorum is in fact a form of filibuster which has been used by both parties on the state and national levels. If you think that the filibuster in the U.S. Senate is legitimate, and I do, you can't have much of an issue with fleebagging.

Democrats may have a better cause for complaint. From Powerline:

The Republicans stripped the collective bargaining provisions out of the budget bill in a conference committee. Democrats are howling that the move was illegal because Wisconsin's open meeting law requires some public bodies to give 24 hours notice before they meet. Would an open meeting law apply to a legislative conference committee?

Powerline provides the language of the open meeting law and it basically says the law applies to the State Legislature and its committees except when it doesn't.

There may be a legal issue here but it is certainly a technicality. Open meetings laws are intended keep government committees from doing things in the dark. This was hardly done in the dark. The strategy has been openly discussed for weeks and the action has been national news for longer.

Do you think that Wisconsin Republicans played fast and loose with the rules here? Well, what did you think when U.S. House Democrats "deemed" a bill to have passed the Senate when it didn't, in order to get Health Care reform around the roadblock known as Senator Scott Brown from Massachusetts? That was playing fast and loose with the Constitution.

These two stories are in fact the same story. Governor Scott Walker won in Wisconsin because he and his party won big last November. He isn't polling so well right now, and that may have consequences in the future. Wisconsin Democrats are raising a lot of bucks from this controversy. The only expression of public opinion that really counts, however, is what happens during an election.

Why did Republicans do so well in last year's election? Public opinion began to swing decisively against Democrats just at the time when they began to push their health care legislation. This fact was observable in not only in public opinion polling but in the polls that count: the gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey and the Senate election in Massachusetts. Democrats decided to floor the pedal on the convertible and went off the cliff last November.

What happened in Wisconsin is the consequence of what happened in polling places across that state and across the nation. Health care reform gave the U.S. House of Representatives and Wisconsin to the Republicans. Right now it looks likely to give them the U.S. Senate next year. Health care reform resulted in an end to collective bargaining for public employees in Wisconsin and Ohio.

That is democracy. Of course the winds may change for Governor Walker and other Republicans nationally. Unfortunately for Democrats, the national fiscal climate is not favorable to their passions. The pressure of public debt is settling down on all the aspirations of government. Nothing that either party does in the near future is likely to change this.

ps.  I stand (modestly) corrected on the "public notice" issue in Wisconsin.  The issue is a canard.  As I noted, public meetings are required by the open meetings law except where they aren't.  They aren't when the law conflicts with any rule of the legislature.  The Volokh Conspiracy (may it be praised) explains the Senate rule under which the action was taken. 

Comments

[Donald Pay]

"This was hardly done in the dark."

The vote in the "conference committee" (in quotes because the bill had not passed both houses) and Senate was not on specific legislative language, but on a bill summary. No one had the bill in hand. There was less than two hour notice, which the Republican AG had said was the minimum requirement in an emergency.

The election in Wisconsin did not center around the health care debate or budgetary issues. It centered around jobs and the economy.

[BillW]

I, for one, am heartily sick of the naked hypocracy of the left - the "get over it we won - Republicans can ride in the back seat" attitude of the Democrats in Washington over the last two years - now ranting in typical abusive language when the same ting is happening in reverse in Wisconsin.

Hey Donald - the voters in Wisconsin elected 19 republican senators to 12 Democrats. The voters are not nearly as stupid as you make them out to be. The duly elected representatives are doing exactly what the were elected to do. It is democracy in action.

The rantings, vile accusations and trashing of the capitol building in Madison demonstrates a deplorable lack of respect for the democratic process, and for the voters of Wisconsin.

Liberals hell-bent on getting their way contrary to the clear wishes of the majority of voters are an abomination that should make you ashamed to be a Democrat. Your party has no right to try to ram your minority views down the throats of Americans

[George Mason]

This was done by the rules within the constitution. It was not done by the democrats rules. The Republicans braved the intimidation and harassment of Obama's bussed in thugs to meet in the chamber under a barrage of abuse from the aforementioned while the dem 14 hid out in Illinois. If their arguments were so persuasive why didn't they stay and debate? (Maybe they know how to read the election results.)

[Ken Blanchard]

Donald: 1. no one is mad because of anything that was surprising in that bill. 2. Wisconsin is on planet earth. The same electoral forces that swept Republicans in across the nation were obviously active in Wisconsin. It possible that those forces would have been just as strong without health care reform, but that is mere conjecture. We know what happened.

[Jimi]

"Democracy in Wisconsin" = Oxymoron

[William]

When Jesse Jackson and Michael Moore show up to publicly support your cause, it's over. You lose.

[Dave]

A little historical note...

“We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison. We must reduce workers salaries and take away their right to strike” ~ Adolf Hitler, May 2, 1933

Or…

“Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.” ~ Ronald Reagan, September 1, 1980

With whom do you stand?

[lynn]

Well, I do NOT stand with the late General Bob Chanin of the NEA who stated, "Despite what some among us would like to believe, it is not because of our creative ideas; it is not because of the merit of our positions; it is not because we care about children; and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. The NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of million of dollars in dues each year because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them."

This says it all.

[Dave]

[...] "If we do that. If we do that and if we do it well, the rest will fall into place. NEA and its affiliates will remain powerful and that power will in turn enable us to achieve our vision of a great public school for every child."

Lynn apparently believes that "a great public school for every child" is evil...

Do you see what the corporate media is doing to you?

[Dave]

Hmm...

A state judge in Wisconsin has just issued a temporary restraining order blocking Gov. Scott Walker's (R-WI) newly-passed law curtailing public employee unions, on the grounds that the GOP-controlled legislature appeared to have violated state public notice requirements when quickly passing the bill last week.