Gov. Scott Walker Has Lost The War
by Rick Ungar
Forbes Blogs
The Policy Page
March 4, 2011
http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/03/04/gov-scott-walker-has-lost-the-war/

In what may be the result of one of the great political
miscalculations of our time, Scott Walker's popularity
in his home state is fast going down the tubes.

A Rasmussen poll out today reveals that almost 60% of
likely Wisconsin voters now disapprove of their
aggressive governor's performance, with 48% strongly
disapproving.

While these numbers are clearly indicators of a strategy
gone horribly wrong, there are some additional findings
in the poll that I suspect deserve even greater
attention.

It turns out that the state's public school teachers are
very popular with their fellow Badgers. With 77% of
those polled holding a high opinion of their educators,
it is not particularly surprising that only 32% among
households with children in the public school system
approve of the governor's performance. Sixty-seven
percent (67%) disapprove, including 54% who strongly
disapprove.

Can anyone imagine a politician succeeding with numbers
like this among people who have kids?

These numbers should be of great concern not only to
Governor Walker but to governors everywhere who were
planning to follow down the path of war with state
employee unions. You can't take on the state worker
unions without taking on the teachers - and the teachers
are more popular than Gov. Walker and his cohorts appear
to realize.

The data should also weigh heavily on the minds of each
and every Republican gearing up to run for president in
2012 as the actions of Governor Walker, Kasich and
anyone else planning to enter this fight are bringing
Christmas to the Obama re-election campaign as they
return rank and file union members to where they once
lived  - the Democratic Party.

The defection of union members to the Republican Party
has been an important part of the electoral math for
successful GOP candidates for many years now and a real
thorn in the side for the democrats.

Consider the re-election campaign of President George W.
Bush where success came down to winning the vote in
Northeastern Ohio.

I'm from Northeastern Ohio. I can tell you without
hesitation that union flows through the blood of these
people who spent so much of their lives in the steel
mills (before they closed up) and are reminded each and
every day of how well their union looked out for them.
While a number of these people are retired and living on
their pensions provided by their collective bargaining
agreement, their kids - many of whom do not hold union
jobs- remain very appreciative of what the unions did
for mom and dad.

While this appreciation may not have prevented these
people from siding politically with the social
philosophy of George W. Bush - as they did- had Bush
taken on the unions in his re-election bid, the outcome
would likely have been very different.

These strong, emotional attachments to the unions
persist in many of the rust belt states where so many
key presidential battlegrounds can be found.

While Governor Walker may yet succeed in getting his
budget repair bill through the legislative process and
accomplish his goal of reducing collective bargaining to
a shell of its former self, the larger battle appears to
already be lost. And while Walker - still in the
earliest stages of his term- may be able to recover over
the next three and a half years, from a national
perspective, I don't know that Walker's future makes any
difference at all.

The damage has already been done.

Should Gov. Walker accomplish his goal, he will have
stoked a level of union anger that I very much suspect
will become a key driver in an Obama victory in 2012. He
will also have prompted the nation's unions to work
together for a common objective- a feat that would have
seemed impossible just one month ago.

If Walker loses his fight, he will have reminded the
unions of the importance of fighting back against their
enemies, reminding them of how life was for their
forbearers who fought to establish the modern union
movement. This will ignite the passion for battle while
reminding those union folks who have been voting
republican of the importance of sticking with the party
that sticks with them.

Walker would have done well to take `yes' for an answer
when the unions agreed to his financial proposals. Given
the procedural advantages in Ohio, where the GOP
legislators could push through the anti-collective
bargaining bill without the need for Democratic
legislators, Walker should have backed down and allowed
John Kasich to take the lead in the effort.

The Wisconsin governor's desire to be at the forefront
of his perceived GOP revolution may not only have doomed
the anti-union effort, but it may forever label him as
the man who gave the democrats the gift that keeps on
giving - the return of the union rank and file into the
arms of the Democratic Party.

[Rick Ungar is an attorney in Southern California, and a
frequent writer, speaker and consultant on health care
policy and politics. He is an active member of the
Association of Health Care Journalists.].

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