— as described by Josh Kraushaar at National Journal:
As bold as the governor has been in calling for tough cuts to the budget, he’s been equally timid in laying out the reasons to restrain collective bargaining in the public sector. He’s taking the approach of a revolutionary reformer, but with the arguments of a number-crunching accountant.
If an elected official is going to bring up an issue sure to gin up opposition, he needs to use every play in the playbook to make his case—and, in Wisconsin, the burden is now on Walker to make a full-fledged argument on altering the relationship between government and public sector unions.
Instead, Walker has backed himself into a rhetorical corner by insisting the move is just about the state’s balance sheet—not the debate over how much unions should influence the government workforce.
Walker is starting to lose the narrow argument that restraining collective bargaining is all about Wisconsin’s budget woes. Wisconsin is one of only four states that currently have a fully funded pension system, according to a Pew Center on the States study, even as most other states are deeply in the red.
[…]
That doesn’t mean that limiting the public sector’s collective-bargaining rights isn’t good policy—or good long-term politics, either.
The generous benefits that have been negotiated in the past are unsustainable in the long term, especially with the baby boom generation heading into retirement. Any system where labor unions are effectively negotiating with their allies, at least when labor-backed Democrats are in power, is fundamentally unfair. And collective-bargaining agreements for teachers are filled with the kind of bureaucratic work rules that make firing incompetent teachers all but impossible, offering minimal incentive for excellence.
[…]
That’s the argument Walker could be making in tandem with budget concerns. It’s not just about penny-pinching, but about advocating strategies to make government more efficient, effective, and accountable.
Americans care as much about the quality and effectiveness of government services as they do about guaranteeing benefits to government workers. The documentary Waiting for Superman showcased the human cost of rules protecting ineffective teachers in public schools. Ask anyone about their local DMV if you want a ground-level view of government services.
That’s the real-life argument Republicans would be wise to embrace as they make the hard sell on fiscal reforms. The public might be prepared for straight talk on entitlements, but it’s important to offer reforms—the light at the end of the tunnel—in exchange for austerity. It might take painful cuts at first, but it’s in the service of a long-term benefit.
Focusing on the narrower budget implications of restraining collective bargaining, by contrast, is a tougher sell. Taking away collective bargaining, simply put, doesn’t come across well to many Americans.
[…] right now, Walker is losing the argument. Conservative and business groups haven’t effectively offered a cohesive message, being outspent on paid media by union forces. It’s striking to see how some of the biggest players in the 2010 midterms, like American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are sitting the Wisconsin fight out, while the Republican Governors Association—which usually spends money on candidates, not causes—just went up with a buy.
“There’s been a failure on the part of those who agree with Walker’s position to define it as a public versus private union fight,” said one veteran Republican pollster.
Much of Kraushaar’s analysis is predicated on the phony polling the media has unleashed on us — and frankly, Walker need not worry about any of the other stuff should he not want to, just so long as he remains firm and gets the votes to pass reform.
But as a matter of strategy, Kraushaar — along with people like Dick Morris — believe that the framing of this issue need take a new turn, given the union’s very public pronouncement that they’ll accept the financial concessions so long as they get to keep their collective bargaining rights. And they have a point: as Morris pointed out in an interview on Laura Ingraham’s show this morning, when the public is asked if they support collective bargaining in the abstract, they say yes: funding can be cut without taking away bargaining power from public workers; however, when the public is asked if collective bargaining should be allowed to stand in the way of merit-based teacher pay, advancement, competition to public schools, etc., they overwhelmingly say no.
It’s a complex issue — and Walker is clearly making structural changes that the more politically involved recognize. And now that he has won the battle on the fiscal front — the union played its hand and was of course willing to give up money they hope to recoup when the next Dem governor takes office, so long as they retain the structural monopoly that gives them control over ever school district — it is time, once the measure has passed, to point out all the bargaining power and newly-returned local control the taxpayers have over their schools as a direct result of this reform.
In the meantime, all I care is that Walker remain firm and do what needs to be done. They’ll be plenty of time to point up the benefits of having done it.
I love these citizen journalists that are completely destroying the MSM narratives.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNaQSidsy2A&feature=player_embedded#at=91
He began making this pivot — explaining the further benefits of restraining collective bargaining — during his speech yesterday. Seems like he wanted to frame it as an educational freedom (for parents and students) argument, at least in part. I assume the idea is that putting school choice into the mix will undercut opposition in Milwaukee. And, it’s just good policy to boot.
Bulllllshit! Public unions are being busted. Finally.
The argument was won last November. That’s why Democrats are in hiding.
Good to hear, bh.
My concern is he keeps threatening but so far no consequences.
Hold a fire drill. Clear the statehouse. Start handing out pink slips. And start passing other legislation. Send copies of the legislation being voted on to every Hooters in Illinois, and let it be known that you’re doing that hoping it gets to the missing Dem senators.
The deep policy implications of Walker’s efforts are fine for wonks like Kraushaar (and many of the regulars here), but they won’t carry far with half-interested, half-informed constituents who know and care far more about Charlie Sheen’s antics than those of their own local teachers. The philosophical arguments are important, and I’d like to seem them made more forcefully and broadcast farther, but they need to be backed up with some good old-fashioned populist rabble-rousing.
I’d love to see Walker and his few allies on the news every day, mocking the teachers and their fellow travelers for the petulant children they are.
Now that would be a cool press conference!
Those skipping work need to be laid off or fired. Enough is enough.
What will be interesting to see play out is the differences in the approaches taken buy Democrat executives and the way that Walker and some other Republicans are moving. As I noted here the Democrats are doing the layoffs and cuts but keeping the unions power intact so as to make a resurgence possible at a later date. Their way also preserves the money laundry to which they have become addicted.
by not buy. I seem to be having a bad spelling day.
Ha! I love it!
The pink slips are coming. Without a doubt, the cost of not reducing the debt service will come entirely out of their ranks.
Clearing out the protesters? I’m not particularly well informed on any of that. I hear different things from different people as far as the reasoning behind the current state of affairs.
I say YET again: Polls don’t vote, people do. And they lie to pollsters.
Which seems only fair, as pollsters lie constantly themselves.
A good deal of this is being done. It’s retail politics though. Door to door. Phone calls. There’s very little press coverage for this sort of thing. For certain though, at every county office in the state, there are volunteers with phone lists and district maps making one-on-one contacts.
Governor Walker, from what I can tell, doesn’t really need to pivot his message very much.
Optics are everything and the pro union goons are providing plenty of bad optics.
For instance, the Wisconsin GOP legislator being blocked and threatened by pro union protesters.
bh, your take?
“There’s been a failure on the part of those who agree with Walker’s position to define it as a public versus private union fight,” said one veteran Republican pollster.
–as Stan Lee used to say, ‘Nuff said.
The average taxpayer has no concept of how they’re getting screwed, day in and day out by the union/democrat monopoly of their schools and government offices. Isn’t fucking someone while they’re asleep against the law? Rape?
I seem to be having a bad spelling day.
Too much exposure to public education will do that to you. Hang in there!
I’ve been hearing that as a rational for allowing the current situation in Madison, Blake.
Of course, I’m also hearing other people say that we’re essentially afraid of A) finding out what would happen if we actually ordered the police to do their jobs and B) the optics of having to call out the National Guard in Madison.
For my part, I think there is some merit to the argument whether it’s intentional or simply a result of a reluctance to take stronger steps.
bh,
I would imagine all scenarios have been discussed by Governor Walker and his team.
Moving cautiously and seeing what develops is never a bad strategy..providing one has alternative plans in place.
Governor Walker for President.
Yeah, I said it.
If anybody is afraid to find out what happens when their police are ordered to perform their lawful duties, then they’re already screwed. Forget optics — we need to expose self-serving law enforcement leaders and root them out now. Visibly. Publicly. Loudly. Covering up one’s police corruption is just stupid.
The latest whispers I’ve heard are that this is the last push (for now) on the budget bill. After we clearly pass any chance to rework our debt servicing, we lay off the equivalent number of state workers and then go back to passing all non-financial bills.
I’m also hearing that the reluctance to pass the collective bargaining provision separately (as a non-finance bill) comes from two concerns. A) We want to give them zero judicial pretext for overturning our legislative work and B) we want to win the Supreme Court election first (April 5th) if we’re to go down that path.
Okay, gotta go.
I want to state clearly that I’m not hearing that from anyone even remotely related to the Walker administration, Squid.
Optics, optics, and the Democrats solution to unemployment shown optically.
That’s good, bh. I still hope whoever is saying such things realizes just how scary the implications are.
“Oh, you mean the people who wouldn’t vote for me no matter what? Fuck them.”
More audio and optical civility.
Walker has a few years before his next election, and by then it will be obvious that the sky didn’t fall.
I’d say the grass smells of plastic.
Blue on blue threats too.
SEIU aboard.
Ace has this posted up. Pretty nice take down of 4th and 8th grade test scores between unionized Wisconsin and non-unionized Texas.
Courtesy of none other than by the great Iowahawk. Plus he deals a pretty big dose of a Texas sized ass kicking to Paul Krugman in the process. So win, win
Geoffb 9:38,
Great content at that “differences” link. Does that explain why Doyle walked away from it all. Or was there more to his departure? He crossed a lot of lines, it seems, with the fund raids.
Mr. B,
I can’t help you on those questions as I have no knowledge of what happened in Wisconsin prior to this last election. I’m a Michigander.
I do believe that what they say the various Democrats are doing is not aimed to preserve the States so much as to preserve their Party by keeping the union money flowing even if at a slower rate. It has become their lifeblood.