Scott Walker vindicated again

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Scott Walker vindicated again Image Credit: Gov. Scott Walker via Facebook Published by: Dan Calabrese on Friday August 1st, 2014 Dan Calabrese Wisconsin Supreme Court upholds signature law limiting power of public-employee unions. If you want to know why it's so difficult to win substantive policy victories over the left, but also get an object lesson in what it takes to pull it off, you really need to look to Wisconsin. That's where Gov. Scott Walker, first elected in 2010 as part of the first Red Wave in reaction to ObamaCare, has had to fight and win every conceivable type of battle in order to introduce economic and fiscal sanity to a state that has sorely needed it. No issue has defined Walker's efforts more clearly that Public Act 10, which denies public employee unions the right to collectively bargain over the issue of benefits (although they maintain that right when it comes to wages). The act was passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor, in spite of stunts like the one that saw every Democrat state senator flee the state and hole up in Illinois hotels - all in an attempt to invalidate the law via the technicality of denying the Legislature a quorum. And of course, any time you pass a law taking taxpayer-funded goodies away from a favored constituency of the left, they are going to take you to court. Walker has been fighting court battles against public employee unions since the day this law passed. And yesterday, as is his track record, Walker won again:

The decision was 5-2, with Justice Michael Gableman writing the lead opinion, which found that collective bargaining over a contract with an employer is not a fundamental right for public employees under the constitution. Instead, it's a benefit that lawmakers can extend or restrict as they see fit, he said. "No matter the limitations or 'burdens' a legislative enactment places on the collective bargaining process, collective bargaining remains a creation of legislative grace and not constitutional obligation. The First Amendment cannot be used as a vehicle to expand the parameters of a benefit that it does not itself protect," Gableman wrote. Rejecting arguments made by the Madison teachers union and Public Employees Local 61, a group of city of Milwaukee employees, Gableman said that public employees still had the right to form unions to influence their employers, but government officials aren't obligated to listen to them.

The Wisconsin example is something every conservative activist should be required to study in depth, because it demonstrates what's really required if conservative elected officials want to actually do the things they say they stand for. Anyone can tell you during a campaign that he or she "stands for" certain ideas. And activists tend to take their cue from such things. This guy stands for lower taxes, or border security, or banning abortion, and I'm for that so I'm for him. So that guy gets elected, only to find his supporters later demoralized because the things that guy stands for didn't happen. They reason they didn't happen is that they are extremely hard to do, and most people who run for office vowing to do them don't have any idea what doing them would actually require. What Walker has discovered in Wisconsin is that, even if you get the legislative majorities you need and you get your agenda passed into law, the fight has only just begun. The left has tried to recall Walker. Democrat local prosecutors have tried to manufacture scandals to take Walker down, while the media have done their best to help by reporting these "scandals" as if they are legitimate. The unions have sued to overturn the law. The Democrats have attempted every conceivable procedural trick to invalidate the law. And even now, Walker is locked in a very tight battle for re-election. Most Republican officeholders would look at all that and say it's just not worth the fight. Their political advisors would tell them that even if they could win all those battles, it will cost them too much politically because the voters will grow weary of all the constant fighting. That, of course, is exactly what the left is counting on in its strategy to simply move from one obstructive strategy after another. If they can't take the law down, they'll take Walker down, and then they'll get rid of the law too. You want to know why Congress never cuts spending, never changes the tax code, and basically never does any of the things conservatives hope for when they vote to send Republicans to Congress? It's because these actions involve so much more than just taking a vote, and Republican members of the political class are not prepared for the kinds of fights Scott Walker has had to endure. They will tell you that they "stood for" this or that, and you'll give them credit for that. But they won't get it done. Getting it done is a long, hard slog, and it's an amazing testimony to his courage, skill and tenacity that Scott Walker has accomplished what he has in Wisconsin. Nice work, Governor. But there's no time to rest. It's a new day, and you know perfectly well they're gunning for you today too.