QUOTE OF THE DAY…. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) push for collective bargaining reform in Wisconsin is akin to the accomplishments of Presidents Lincoln and Reagan, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said Friday evening. […]
“I’d say it’s a new revolution going on over there,” Bachmann said. “We saw the great Ronald Reagan pushing back the Soviet Union in the eastern bloc nations. We saw Abraham Lincoln push back the Confederacy in Atlanta. And now we’re seeing the Republicans in Wisconsin causing the Democrats to retreat to Rockford, Ill., so I’d say we’re winning!”
I’m tempted to note the dramatic differences between quorum avoidance and grand national conflicts, but I don’t imagine Bachmann would understand anyway.
That said, it’s worth noting that Bachmann isn’t the only one with delusional notions of Walker’s union-busting crusade. Dana Milbank noted that Walker himself has similar ideas in his head.
Of course, Washington knows all about tribalism, as both sides giddily await a possible shutdown of the government. But Walker’s excesses show where this leads. It leads to hypocrisy: He called President Obama’s health-care reform an “unprecedented power grab,” but once in office he launched his own grab by attempting to end collective bargaining for public workers. It leads to falsification: He claims he campaigned on ending collective bargaining, but a Politifact analysis found that he did no such thing. And now, it’s leading to fantasy.
Walker told the faux Koch that “before we dropped the bomb,” he showed his Cabinet a picture of Ronald Reagan and proclaimed that “one of the most defining moments of his political career [was] when he fired the air traffic controllers.” That, Walker said, “was the first crack in the Berlin Wall.” And now, “this is our time to change the course of history.”
It takes some creativity to liken the air traffic controllers to Wisconsin’s public workers, who are not on strike and have offered concessions. It takes even more creativity to credit the firing of the controllers (rather than, say, Reagan’s military buildup) for the fall of the Berlin Wall. And it takes gall for Walker to claim the mantle of Reagan, who compromised with Democrats and Soviets alike.
Milbank equates Walker’s tactics to those of a “hooligan.” That’s perhaps not the first label I’d come up with, but it’ll do.
