Posted on 03/07/2011 10:18:46 AM PST by bigbob
How many times have we heard the lament: If only we had a leader who wouldn’t stick his or her finger in the air to see which way the wind was blowing, who wouldn’t govern by reading the polls every morning?
We’ve all asked that question at one time or another. We’ve all wished for someone who would act according to principles rather than polls.
Like his principles or not, we’ve got such a leader. In fact, Gov. Scott Walker took to his Twitter account this past weekend to pass along an article from the Weekly Standard – more about that in a second – which Walker termed “a good reminder why long-term leadership matters more than temporary poll watching.”
The governor is absolutely right.
To be sure, to use a popular word from last year, Walker and the Republicans are taking a shellacking in public surveys. Everyone looks for bias in polling, but even those usually tagged as leaning toward conservatives show Walker’s numbers in the tank, his approval ratings in the low 40s.
There are several reasons why this has happened, all of them predictable.
First, the liberal mainstream media has framed debate in a way that has automatically biased the public conversation. Reporters and editors, their headlines and stories, all talk about the governor’s efforts to strip away public employees’ collective bargaining “rights.”
Never mind that collective bargaining is not a constitutional right. Never mind that collective bargaining is not a human right. Never mind that two-million federal employees don’t have collective bargaining, nor do public employees in some other states.
Never mind all that. If you frame the debate that way, if you ask Americans if someone’s “rights” should be taken away, they are going to say no. It’s a question that’s answered before it’s asked.
But collective bargaining is only a legislated privilege. As with any privilege that has been abused, it should be rescinded. Frame the debate that way and you will have a very different public dialogue. Ask the questions that way and you’ll get very different answers.
Then, too, the governor’s message is more complicated than the simplistic union line. The unions say they have agreed to benefit and pension concessions, so Walker should give up something, too, namely his demand to do away with collective bargaining.
Sounds reasonable, but it’s collective bargaining that got us here in the first place. Ending collective bargaining in the public sector is inextricably tied to containing costs in the future, not just now. And one or two union leaders offering concessions can’t speak for hundreds of local unions that might not be so concessionary even now; indeed, history indicates they wouldn’t be, and so does the current rush to complete fat contracts before the budget-repair bill passes.
Indeed, those union leaders offering concessions can’t really offer them, because the union rank-and-file has to ratify any deals they make and there’s no guarantee they would.
Excerpted here for space reasons but well worth a visit to his blog site to read a clear and coherent summary of why Governor Walker is on the right track and why eventually Wisconsin voters will realize it.
Walker may need to sharpen up his message and communicate the key points more powerfully, but he must not compromise or cave.
On a side note: They wouldn’t be attacking Governor Sarah Palin night & day if their internal polls jibed with the crap they show us. She would have been shunted aside by now, into the dustbin with John Edwards, Geraldine Ferraro, Dan Quayle, Charlie Crist, Alvin Greene, Al Gore and Cynthia McKinney.
Right on...and when you consider how Mitch Daniels bounced back from low 40% ratings to over 75% and won re-election, it give some reason for optimism - not only for Scott Walker but for Sarah Palin who also “has bad numbers”...
"But collective bargaining is only a legislated privilege. As with any privilege that has been abused, it should be rescinded"
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