Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Walker vs. the Machine

My friend Gary Miller used to let me play in his internet sandbox Truth vs. the Machine, which is now sadly defunct. But the Machine never goes away, as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is learning:

Shouting "This is what democracy looks like!" and singing "We Shall Overcome," volunteers, union activists and Democratic partisans delivered a truckload of petitions to the state's Government Accountability Board, virtually assuring that Walker will face a recall election this year, probably in the summer.


For his part, Walker seems to be taking a "bring it on" stance:
Walker said he looks forward to talking to voters "about my continued promises to control government spending, balance the budget and hold the line on taxes." He added that he eliminated a $3.6 billion deficit last year without raising taxes.
And the Democrats do have a problem they need to address -- they may have a lot of anger, but they don't have a candidate:
Potential candidates include Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who lost to Walker in 2010; former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk, who failed in runs for governor in 2002 and attorney general in 2006; David Obey, a former longtime congressman from northwestern Wisconsin; and state Sens. Tim Cullen, a moderate Democrat, and Jon Erpenbach, a leader of the Democrats who fled the state last winter to keep the Senate from approving the anti-union bill. The election would serve as a prelude to the presidential battle in this battleground state, and Erpenbach said he believes it will have national implications because Democrats feel they are fighting an assault on the middle class. But he said the Democrats will not win with a simple protest candidate. "'Vote for me because I'm not Scott Walker' is not going to do it," Erpenbach said.
To review -- the Democrats offer either people who have lost before (Barrett and Falk) or very old men (Obey and Cullen). I've seen Erpenbach and he won't beat Walker, either. Democrats in Wisconsin are like dogs that chase the car. They've now caught the car. Can they do anything with it? Guess we'll find out soon enough, but the guess here is that it won't end well for them.

3 comments:

First Ringer said...

And that is the fundamental difference between the WI & CA recall attempts - Walker has to run against a specific opponent, Grey Davis had to run against, well, the concept of kicking him out of office.

Imagine CA in 2003 playing by WI rules. Arnold would have to run in a primary against Tom McClintock, Darrell Issa and probably a few other Republicans - and might not have won. The eventual GOP nominee would have been targeted by Davis et al and pounded over the course of a standard campaign, not a two-month sprint. And considering that Davis still got nearly 45% of the recall vote, it's not hard to imagine him winning in essentially a two major candidate race.

Barring a currently unforeseen event or candidate, I'd put my money on Walker winning the recall.

Anonymous said...

I'm waiting for the fraud to be exposed with the recall signatures. The 1 million includes duplicates and other shenanigans. There is promised to be a public database of all signatories which should eliminate duplicates and any Donald Duck, Adolf Hitler types. The part I can't wait to see is if there are names of people who didn't really sign the petition. The bet here is that there are, and hopefully this will be exposed. It may not be enough to stop the recall, but it will definitely expose the Thugs for what they are!

The Madison libs have had a bit too much of their own Kool Aid lately. They feel that their pet candidates such as Kathleen Falk (a multiple time state wide loser) and Tammy Barrett and their diatribe of crap, will play in the rest of the state. It may, but the bet here is it won't.

Mr. D said...

Apt comparison, FR.

Anon, you anticipated a point I was going to make eventually. I don't doubt that there are enough legitimate signatures to trigger the recall, but if it turns out that a significant percentage of the signatures are tossed out -- say, anything larger than 5% -- it's going to make the Democrats look very bad indeed. If the argument is that Walker needs to go because he was dishonest in his campaign, which is a theme I've seen among the lefties for some time, identifiable and quantifiable dishonesty on the part of his opponents will really hurt that argument.