Some Thoughts On Wisconsin

I was pleased, but not surprised at the results in the Wisconsin recall election yesterday.  Watching the election return pundits on TV was entertaining, from a political theater viewpoint.

Fox News was predictable.  Since I am a conservative, I agreed with almost everything that was said.  I think they may have overestimated what this state election will mean in November, but I thought (through conservative colored glasses) that most of their opinions were dead on.  No surprise there ...

CNN was a pool of undisguised disappointment.  When those folks realized the Democrats were going to lose, and had to call the election for Governor Walker, you could see them deflate.  Then, they started trying to explain it all away, make excuses, and make accusations.  I didn't hear any of them claim voter fraud, but a common theme was how the Democrats got outspent, and that cost them the election.

MSNBC was hilarious.  The Ed Show was on, and the host, a completely biased lib who is proud to tell you so, was almost crying.  He ran out of excuses and accusations quickly, and just started making up incoherrent crap.  All of his 'guests' were libs, and their comments and reactions were predictable.  When they were forced to cut to Walker's acceptance speech, these rude a*holes cut in audio of the 20 or so lib jerks in Ed's audience, who were booing.  If you were casually watching, it seemed that the booing was coming from the location of Walker's speech - a quick cut to the other channels proved that wasn't the case.  Jerks.

The Democrat talking points obviously had been distributed beforehand, because every one of them was singing the same story - big, evil, dirty, Republican money from outside the state caused the tragic and criminal defeat of worker's rights.  The only thing they couldn't agree on was how much evil outside SuperPAC money had been funnelled in.  Some folks said Republicans outspent Democrats 7 to 1.  Others said 10 to 1.  Some even put up pre-prepared pie charts showing the amounts of money spent and where it came from.  Curiously, none of them mentioned the tens of millions of dollars and thousands of union 'volunteers' shipped into the state by outside unions and the Democrat Party.

Democrat exit pollsters did their best to turn this shit sandwich into something nice.  Somehow, if we believe them, even though Walker won the election by about 9 points, support for Obama led Romney by 12 points.  Huh?  So, we are to believe that almost 20 percent of the folks who supported the Republican Walker in the recall would support Obama over Romney.  I call a huge BULLSHIT on that one.

Something that really grabbed my attention during the coverage was this fact - membership in Public Employee unions in Wisconsin has dropped by over 50% since Walker's reforms were enacted.  Walker's restrictions upon collective bargaining rights, sweetheart union deals, and golden retirement packages for government employees were the primary reason for the recall being done in the first place.  This means one of two things, or a combination - folks who really didn't want to be forking over their money to unions in the form of dues decided to stop doing so - folks who realized that being in the unions wasn't going to guarantee them a big salary, big benefits, and big retirements, decided that they'd rather do something else with their money than give it to the unions.  Unions all over America are quaking in their boots right now - especially the ones who represent government employees.

Update - On this, the day after Socialism was defeated in Wisconsin, the DOW Jones Industrial average closed up over 300 points.  Coincidence?  Not a chance in hell!