When You've Lost the Journal Sentinel

Unless there's a Memorial Day equivalent of the October Surprise, it's difficult to imagine that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is going to be ousted in the recall election taking place on June 5. He even got the tepid endorsement of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today:

But this election isn't about Tom Barrett. It's about Scott Walker.

Even if you disagree with Walker's policies, does that justify cutting short his term as governor? And if so, where does such logic lead? To more recall elections? More turmoil?

It's time to end the bickering and get back to the business of the state. We've had our differences with the governor, but he deserves a chance to complete his term. We recommended him in 2010. We see no reason to change that recommendation. We urge voters to support Walker in the June 5 recall election.

It's sometimes difficult to see what's happening in Wisconsin from across the St. Croix, but it seems pretty evident from the anecdotal sources I have at my disposal, especially my Facebook feed, that the Walker supporters are fired up and that there's not a lot of enthusiasm for the challenger, Tom Barrett. This election is a rematch of 2010 and Walker won that election pretty easily.

It's always been difficult to see what's happened since then as anything other than a tantrum. A commenter on Ann Althouse's blog summed it up neatly, if in a PG-13/R fashion. Since we try to keep this blog PG, I'm going to do a little cleanup, but alert readers will be able to guess the replaced Anglo-Saxon terminology:

Because the Democrats know that it's a losing proposition. "Hey Wisconsin, I think you should pay pay for my lavish pension, which you don't have, and my lavish benefits, which you don't have, and my gold plated health insurance, which you don't have, and be able to retire at 55, which you'll never do" is not going to win a lot of hearts and minds. No one is buying this "workers rights" and "save the middle class" #@%#@. And this "It's about the kids" crap from teachers...no, @$%#@, it's about you.

Barrett cannot talk about Act 10 without talking about how he would pay for things if Act 10 went away....and the only way is higher taxation. Good. %@&@#. Luck.

Jobs? Ha ha. The Dems just #%@# canned the mine out of spite, costing the state hundreds of good paying jobs, many of them union.

This election is over. But Walker's campaign and it's volunteers are energized and are going to sprint through the finish line. Anecdotal, but friends and family who are anti-Walker are pretty silent on the recall. The daily ugliness on my Facebook page is gone. They know.

The daily ugliness on my Facebook page is gone, too. Last year was a fiesta of Walker-bashing and fist iconography, but no more. The recall hasn't turned out the way my lefty friends and family members had envisioned, and while the spectacle has been cause for a lot of heartburn, it shouldn't be surprising. The commenter on Althouse's blog summed it up nicely -- what the unions and their Democratic allies want is, in the end, a losing proposition. The public employee union model eventually costs more than the citizenry can afford. Scott Walker recognized this and took action.

There's a lesson in what's happening that has application in Minnesota, of course. Minnesota faces the same issues that Wisconsin has faced. Education Minnesota and WEAC are equivalent organizations, making the same arguments, using the same techniques. Because Mark Dayton was able to scrape together a plurality in the last election, we've been spared the drama up to this point. But it's coming. Minnesota's version of Scott Walker waits in the wings. The only real question is whether the avenging angel arrives in 2015 or later on.