Still Ratfucking After All These Years

Nixon's team of paralegal political operatives used to have a term for discrediting, disorienting, and otherwise disrupting the opposition: ratfucking. It turns out that rank-and-file officials in the Republican party are still operating under the pretense that this is an acceptable way to conduct a party in a democracy. An Indiana prosecutor encouraged Governor Scott Walker to stage an assassination attempt and blame it on public employees and the unions that they organize. Of course, Scott Walker considered such options, and admitted to as much on his phone call with "David Koch," but ultimately decided against it. Probably because he isn't "Tricky" Dick Nixon.
If Nixon does have a second incarnation, there will surely be Republican operatives willing to do his misdeeds.

#WIunion No Surrender

WSJ apparently stands for 'wishful thinking,' with this morning's banner article claiming that Wisconsin Democrats are surrendering to Governor Walker's union-busting bill. The Wall Street Journal seems to be caught in a Rupert Murdoch fantasy world where the rich always win against workers. At the beginning of the Wisconsin standoff, it looked to national pundits as though Republicans had a high-profile winning issue. After weeks of polling showing consistent support for public employee bargaining rights (at about 60% versus 30% against), the right-wing media outlets are attempting to bury the story. Democrats are highlighting Republicans' hostility towards workers with a series of U.S. House hearings. The union-bashing has tepid support from national Republicans, and Democrats are hoping to force a more public stand:

Other congressional leaders haven't been reluctant to weigh in. On the Republican side, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders have weighed in on behalf of Walker, whose proposal would eliminate most collective bargaining rights for public employees and force increased contributions by workers to pension and benefit programs.

Republicans have dramatically sloughed off all pretense of a mandate. The public has weighed the Republican agenda and found it wanting.

More heartening in the long run is the fact that Congressional Democrats are picking this fight. Nancy Pelosi proved her effectiveness as a minority leader against Bush in the 2005-2007 cycle, and now her team is picking the right fights with a much less disciplined opponent. If House Democrats can continue to gain the offensive against the GOP's less least popular ideas, we could see a return of Speaker Pelosi in 2014, if not necessarily Democratic control of the Senate. A Democratic House and a Republican controlled Senate would hardly be different from the first two years of the Obama presidency.

Thursday Round-up

National Republicans are caught between the tea party and reality, so Speaker John Boehner is asking Democrats to tell him what to oppose. Meanwhile, the Republican's Dennis Kucinich knock-off is pushing for articles of impeachment, following theSillySeason's advice.

Polling continues to show that Americans in general and Wisconsonites in particular support public worker collective bargaining rights. Rasmussen (R) confirms the PPP poll of Wisconsin that a majority there opposes Scott Walker's plan to bust public sector unions. The survey was realeased on the heals of a Rupert Murdoch-bought poll which confirmed that nationally, collective bargaining rights for teachers, firefighters, and other state employees enjoy almost a 30 point edge over proposals similar to the Wisconsin bill. I wonder what all of the Right-wing blogogandists will have to say about the Wall Street Journal and Rasmussen polls that confirm the results of the PPP, NYT/CBS, and Gallup polling on the collective bargaing question. Two days ago, Michelle Malkin, Fire Andrea Mitchell, Hot Air, and a dozen other spit-and-bluster factories attacked the poll findings. Thus far, no retractions, no mea culpas, no nothing.

Fear and Loathing in Madison

When Governor Wisconsin Scott Walker pushed his bill stripping public sector unions of collective bargaining rights, he was unprepared for the political response. 14 Senators fled the state to prevent the state Senate from passing the bill over strong minority objections, supported by a mass demonstration around the Capital building in Madison. Protestors staged sit-ins in the Capital, staying for days on end.

On Monday, Walker ordered state troopers to close off the capital building in an attempt to starve out the protestors. Sadly for Walker, his actions alsolocked out one of Walker's supporters with the protestors.

Dozens of protesters, some shouting "Shame! Shame! Shame," chased Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, around the Capitol Tuesday evening as he banged in vain on closed windows and locked entrances trying to get in.

Opponents of a bill demonstrated their disapproval to one of the bill's supporters who was put in a bad position by the tactics of the Governor he supports. The biggest news story here is that Walker's tactics are causing problems for governance in Wisconsin, and possibly that the protestors have forced the government to insulate itself, becoming less effective in conspiring against the unions.

Right wing blogs, on the other hand, are pushing this story as some sort of terrorist attack on Sen. Grothman.

Don't Believe Your Lying Polls

A number of recent polls finding support for workers' right to organize unions have drawn fire from the internet right wing. The PPP poll in Wisconsin found that a 2012 electorate would elect Governor Walker's former opponent with 52% of the vote. Democrat Barrett had lost in November by 7 points.

The general charge from the right is that the samples of the PPP and NYT/CBS polls are fundamentally flawed. Hot Air, leading the charge to discredit the two polls, rests on three arguments to attack the results.

Polling deniers are making a big deal out of the partisen identification of the sample. As in most long-form polls, participants were asked to identify themselves as "Democratic, indepdent, or Republican" but not necessarily in that order. The NYT/CBS polls is under attack for finding a 36/26/31 split for each of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Hot Air alleges that this finding proves that the sample is unreprentative of Americans:

an absurd sample for political polling. In December, Rasmussen’s general-population survey put Republicans ahead, 36.0% to 34.7% for Democrats. A recent poll by Gallup shows erosion in Democratic affiliation all through 2010. In 2008, Barack Obama won the popular vote by seven points nationwide, and the NYT/CBS poll assumes that the electorate has grown more Democratic in 2011.

Rasmussen has a well-documented house effect which leans towards Republicans and tends to push leaners, which is why independents typically register at lower levels in their polls than other firms' results. Many independent voters were leaning Republican following the election in November, and even then would have shown up as self-identified indpendents in other polling firms' reports. As even Ed Morissey noted previously, parties tend to gain in identification rates following victories, then quickly revert to a normal status. While Morrissey is determined to see this event as a damning inaccuracy in the NYT/CBS poll, even he would have told us in December that this partisan ID reversal was likely going to happen, not as an artifact of polling, but as a matter of reality. Ed Morrissey is comparing rotten apples to oranges when he reaches back to the Rasmussen polling in late November and puts it alongside February NYT polling.

Going on to compare party identification to the presidential popular vote is more specious.

Rhetoric of Confrontation

There's a bit of an update on that violent rhetoric that pundits have been on the lookout for since the Tucson massacre. Two stories are surfacing today. The first is out of New Hampshire, where a local Democrat encouraged union members to "get bloody" in defense of their rights to organize. Right wing media outlets are pushing this story as an example of violence. Left wing blogs are ablaze with an Indiana Deputy Attorney General who urged police to "use live ammunition" against protestors in Wisconsin. He has since resigned.

Capuano's remarks arguably acknowledged the history of struggle in the labor movement. Establishing American unions cost workers and their families their lives. The unions were built on a foundation of blood, it is true, but it was largely the blood of unionized workers. When someone says "get bloody" it takes a bit of a guilty conscience to automatically assume the speaker intends to shed others' blood. There is nothing inherently violent in "getting bloody" except the expectation that the other side of the equation are willing to spill worker blood, not a far reach of the imagination considering the history of strike-busting in the midwest. Capuano's "get bloody" remark is not distinguishable from the "roll up our sleeves and get dirty" metaphor.

Madison's chief of police was activetly worried by Scott Walker consideration of using violence as a tool against union members. The thuggishness expressed by Walker's consideration of planting "troublemakers" on his call with "David Koch" is much more troubling. The additional cheer leading for violence coming from the Indiana Republican establishment is absolutely inappropriate. The professional Right is in the middle of a campaign to blur the line between calling for violence and calling for shared sacrifice. It certainly is chilling to then hear them turn around and urge their version of sacrifice. The simplistic conclusion here is that Democrats believe in the value of voluntary sacrifice; Republicans would prefer to put others on the altar and force them to give their lives.

Koch On Line One #WIunion

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker made a bit of a fumble today, answering a prank call from a gonzo journalist claiming to be David Koch, one of the infamous libertarian sugar daddies. The Koch brothers are heavily involved in the Wisconsin labor dispute, opening a lobbying office in Madison today to support stripping bargaining rights away from public sector workers. Ezra Klein highlights Scott Walker's big political problem here:

But if the transcript of the conversation is unexceptional, the fact of it is lethal. The state's Democratic senators can't get Walker on the phone, but someone can call the governor's front desk, identify themselves as David Koch, and then speak with both the governor and his chief of staff? That's where you see the access and power that major corporations and wealthy contributors will have in a Walker administration, and why so many in Wisconsin are reluctant to see the only major interest group representing workers taken out of the game.

The critique many conservatives have made of public-sector unions is that they both negotiate with and fund politicians. It's a conflict of interest. Well, so too do corporations, and wealthy individuals. That's why Murphy -- posing as Koch -- was able to get through to Walker so quickly. And it shows what Walker is really interested in here: He is not opposed, in principle, to powerful interest groups having the ear of the politicians they depend on, and who depend on them. He just wants those interest groups to be the conservative interest groups that fund him, and that he depends on.

The Walker administration wanted a debate over whether "special interest groups" should have a certain level of influence in the political debate. Now that the public knows Walker's willingness to have his ear bent by a more poweful special interest, the debate must shift to which interest groups deserve special training. As I posted on Monday, there is no principled reason to treat unions and corporations differently when it comes to political speech and the power to effect political change. Even the Citizens United opinion acknowledges the similarity. Walker will now have to articulate a distinction that is either contrary to the fairly conservative opinion espoused by the Supreme Court, or explain his preference for the Kochs over the citizens of Wisconsin.