The Democrats, unions, and community organizing groups that laid siege to the state capitol, depicted Governor Scott Walker as a fascist dictator, and tried to prevent the legislature from voting on collective bargaining reforms are reaching out to Wisconsin voters in today’s recall with a desperate pledge: Walker divided the state, and Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett will heal it.
The cover of Milwaukee’s alternative weekly, the Shepherd Express, nicely captures the left’s last-minute pitch. A vote for Barrett is a vote for “healing our state,” says publisher Louis G. Fortis, who not only blames Walker for causing political divisions but even for causing three divorces “because the political debates had become nasty political fights over the past year.”
Having picked those fights, time and time again, and having lost one after another, the left is now trying to claim it is Walker who has wounded the state. The implication is that if the voters would simply allow the unions to have whatever they want–at taxpayer expense–then we could all enjoy peace and quiet again. That’s not democracy; that’s extortion, and if the polls are any indication, voters aren’t willing to pay for protection.