Congratulations Wisconsin!
The victory by Wisconsin Republican governor Scott Walker in a heavily-financed and heavily-manned union ‘recall election’ campaign against him shows that Obama’s brand of union-centric and government-centered socialism is becoming increasingly unpopular.
Recall elections are special elections that are held when enough citizens are upset with their leader and wish to “recall” him/her before the next official election. They are rare occurrences. Only 19 states even allow for recalls, and only two governors have been recalled in all of American history.
Walker’s victory by a whopping 7 points in a state like Wisconsin that routinely has voted Democrat in US Senate, gubernatorial and presidential elections over the last 30 years shows that Obama is in even bigger trouble than most of us already knew. The media had continued to call the race "close", which shows how biased those media are. And in 3 out of 4 state senate recall elections, Republlicans prevailed while one Democrat apparently has won by only a very slim margin, certainly thanks to the 'routine Democrat voter fraud margin of error', although that race could be recounted.
This all goes to show that the left invested massive amounts of money, time and energy in campaigns that have backfired big time. This recall victory has elevated governor Walker beyond his wildest dreams. He is now a GOP superstar.
Walker was elected in November 2010. The unions then became angry when Walker signed a Republican bill to reign in the state-employee labor unions by limiting their collective bargaining rights. Walker did this in order to control the state budget deficit and the plan has been working; the deficit has dropped considerably because Wisconsin’s labor costs for unionized government workers are being reduced.
The unions, however, saw the plan as one more blow to union power as labor unions have become increasingly unpopular. Unions represented more than 40% of all private-industry workers after World War II, but that number is only about 7% today – in large part because union belligerence killed many of the companies that employed them.
Meanwhile about 37% of all government workers today on the local, state and federal level are unionized. A total of about 15 million Americans are unionized today.
So government unions are the last bastion of union power and the law that Walker signed was seen as another nail in the coffin of withering union might.
Walker was challenged in the recall election by Democrat Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett. The two faced off previously in the 2010 election that Walker won by 5 points.
Walker’s win surely adds to the psychosis of the Democrats who have seen election after election fall to the Republicans since Obama was inaugurated. Even Obama’s own former Illinois US Senate seat fell to Republican Mark Kirk.
So is this outcome a sign of the final curtain coming down on Obama in the coming presidential contest?
Well, for another clue look at CNN, the ultra-liberal cable news network. Its ratings have fallen to a 20-year low at the same time that Obama’s popularity is falling and Republicans are winning election after election.
Thus it appears that liberalism is in bad repute. And that is no surprise. Obama’s hard-left agenda is ruining the American economy.
Even a shrewd conservative commentator like Dick Morris, reflecting something that is increasingly apparent, said recently that “Bill Clinton does not want Barack Obama to win.” Morris said that he had heard this from insider Washington sources.
Morris added: “(Clinton) never liked Obama, they never got along.”
OK, so the #2 Power Broker in the Democrat party does not want Obama to win?
Yes, that seems to be true. Clinton hasn’t done much for Obama and he even praised Mitt Romney recently. That was a backhanded slap at Obama. Or a right hook to the chin, depending on how you see it.
Another big-time Democrat operative Bob Shrum even said recently on CBS’ Face the Nation that, “If you let this (November election) just be a referendum (on Obama’s performance), I don’t think the president can win…”
Wow. Kaboom. Another Democrat swerving into the truth. And since when is an election NOT a referendum on a politician’s performance?
Never…
Shrum also said that Obama had created “4.3 million jobs” during his presidency and Democrats all over are repeating this figure. However hotair.com reported that that figure is fiction:
But even Shrum can’t get the record straight. The number of jobs created in Obama’s first term so far is 172,000, counting from February 2009′s overall non-farm jobs number at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (table B-1 from the Current Employment Survey). For the private sector, it’s 780,000 in the same period. If we count from the first month of recovery — which would have been June 2009, four months after signing the $800 billion stimulus bill, the numbers are 2.506 million overall and 3.107 million in the private sector, neither of which is anywhere close to 4.3 million.
Nor are they anything to brag about; on a monthly basis, that averages 86,305 jobs per month in the private sector over the past 36 months after recovery, and just 69,611 in overall non-farm jobs — coincidentally, the same level of job growth as Friday’s disastrous jobs report showed. Both averages fall well below the 125,000 per month we need just to keep up with population growth. Even Shrum’s mythical figure of 4.3 million would have only been an average of 119,000 a month over 36 months of recovery, a basic water-treading pace at the bottom of the trough.
And it is important to remember that Obama spent $800 billion in taxpayer ‘stimulus’ money for many of those jobs.
In addition, millions have dropped out of the labor force under Obama’s terrible policies.
Shrum added that Obama “saved General Motors”, which is false.
What Obama really did was that he bailed out the unions at GM and Chrysler with taxpayer money, the same unions that drove the two companies out of business in the first place.
And the final taxpayer tab for the GM/Chrysler bailouts is likely to be more than $50 billion once you include all the real costs like the future taxes that the two companies will not have pay under the Obama plan.
Hey, with $50 billion of Other People’s Money you can “save” a lot of things…
General Motors and Chrysler should have been left to officially declare bankruptcy. That would have allowed them to reorganize their companies under a private plan that would have cost the taxpayers zero. And they would be better and stronger companies today as a result just as Wisconsin now will be stronger and better with the unions routed under Scott Walker’s win.