“Isn’t it good,” Michelle Malkin asks, “to see Republicans playing hardball with delinquent Democrats?” Indeed, it is, Michelle. Indeed, it is. And let’s hope this is how Republicans start treating Democrats who believe election returns should only result in a governing agenda when they win.
If you hadn’t heard already, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is reporting that state Senate Republicans plan to withhold Democrats’ pay, well, that is, those Democrats who don’t show up to do the job to which they were elected (which is the Badger State is none of them):
Senate Republicans voted Tuesday to make Democrats hiding out in Illinois come back to Wisconsin to pick up their paychecks.
The Senate Committee on Organization voted on a 3-2 party line vote, with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats against, to change Senate rules so that senators who miss two consecutive floor days can no longer have their paychecks dropped automatically into their bank accounts. The vote was taken by paper ballot, which allowed Democrats to cast their votes from out-of-state.
Democrats who have already missed two consecutive floor sessions will now have to come to get their paychecks directly from Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) on the floor of the Senate.
Love it. Let’s hope Republicans across the country take heed to what Wisconsin Senate Republicans are doing. If the Democrats try to undermine their efforts at real government reform, they need to pull out all stops (as provided by the provisions of their state constitutions and the rules of their respective legislative chambers) to combat these obstructionist tactics.
It’s about time we played hardball with the power-hungry plantation party of slavery, union goons and group-think.
Now the Democrats in the Indiana legislature have fled out-of-state…I foresee this as a new trend. If you’re out-voted, just run away.
Apparently; if you’re a Democrat, elections don’t have consequences.
I hope the WI Republicans do more – like similarly suspending fleabaggers’ staff budgets; passing laws like Voter ID that are perfectly reasonable but send Democrat leaders into conniptions; etc.
Most of all, I hope they stay firm in supporting Gov. Walker’s reform package.
I think the Dem’s in general are knee-jerk emotionalists and high-strung enough… all the Rep’s would have to do is declare on air that the Dem’s are not allowed to return, post ‘guards’ outside the Capitol, “roadblocks” on a major thoroughfare in the guise of “looking for them”… and they’d all come sneaking/rushing back in just to oppose the “effort to keep them away from Dah Peoples’ business”. LOL
I’m praying that Gov Kaisich stays strong.
I know what benefits the public teachers get, and it’s a heck of a lot better than most people get, including me. (remember where I work kids).
Jeff,
You mean using the fillibuster, the ammendment process, the rules of debate that are enshrined in the government? They were there, they voiced their dislike. The difference is that the Democrats were so desperate to wrap their disasterous policies in ‘bi-partisanship’ that they didn’t want to take sole credit for the Obamanation.
Again, show me where Republicans hid in another state. Show me where they didn’t show up to prevent a quorum.
Apples and oranges. I’d have thought your teacher parents would have told you that you can’t compare the two.
Here is the legitimacy of collective bargaining writ large: the Wisconsin Democratic Party Senators, and now several of their union colleagues in Indiana, going on strike to hold their government–and their employers–hostage against getting their own way. And attacking the democracy of those two states in the process.
This is an empirical demonstration of the usefulness of decertifying altogether public unions.
As to Jeff, what you carefully and cynically elide is that your hated Republicans in response to two MASSIVE Democratic electoral victories in two straight cycles had the morality and the courage to stay in place and argue the matter–no matter how much you might have disagreed with their disagreements.
Eric Hines
Hey, Tingles Chris Matthews, THIS is HARDBALL.
The fleeing Democrat legislatures is not protesting as much, but this is cold, calculated political strategy; however, it is a road of madness & blackmail of the states they represent. Although Obama is trying to wash his hands of Wisconsin, this has his fingerprints as well. The backfire is going to be a tinderbox for any Democrats involved.
I challenge anyone to read Jeff’s comment at 8:29 without hearing sad violin music in your head. Go on, I challenge you.
I think this public-employee-as-martyr melodrama is getting a mite wearisome. Get off the cross already; teachers made a choice of lifetime job security and three months of vacation a year over the higher earning potential (at one time, not so true any more) of a career in the private sector. They seem to believe that this choice exempts them from the sacrifices others are having to make in this bad economy.
Oh please, like the GOP wouldn’t have done the same thing if that is what was needed to, say, stop a bill to legalize gay marriage or something else they abhor. This move is a LOT more open and LOT more courageous than the anonymous holds used by GOP Senators to block crucial judicial and administration appointments to try to blackmail the administration into caving on totally unrelated pet projects, earmarks, policy demands, and so on, which 99 percent of voters don’t see or understand.
The point is, when the GOP loses elections, you applaud them for doing whatever it takes to stop what you see as a runaway, radical Democratic agenda. I’ve never heard ANY complaints about any GOP TACTIC, no matter how dishonest, underhanded, or stupid. Yet suddenly, because the Democrats lost one election, we are expected to just roll over and take whatever radical agenda you have, and say, thank you sir, may I have another. Not … gonna … happen. Sorry. Dems are gonna stand up for our beliefs, notwithstanding one bad election cycle, just like you called for GOP’ers to do.
And by the way, I am all for SOME sacrifices. They just need to come from EVERYONE. You want the poor and the middle class to suffer a bit, fine, it may be needed to reign in crazy deficits that GOP’ers and Dems alike are equally responsible for. But it is beyond insanity to say hey, even though income disparity between rich and poor is the greatest in our nation’s history, even though the rich are taxed at lower rates than they have in many, many decades, ALL of the burden has to fall on the poor and middle class, ALL of the sacrifices have to come from those already hit hardest by the Bush-created recession. Federal wage and hiring freezes? Fine, I agree. Limiting benefits / increasing worker contributions for state employees going forward (as the unions, by the way, are all agreeing to). Fine, I agree. But even if every single drastic GOP-favored cut, on state and federal levels, go through, it is a drop in the bucket. We need to slash military spending by at least 25 percent, probably far deeper. We need to tax millionaires at the rates they were just a few decades ago, and reinstate inheritence taxes for, again, multi-millionairs. And so on. If the poor and middle class have to sacrifice like never before, the rich should not be favored like never before. Spread the pain, and moderates like myself will be fine with cutting back discretionary spending, freezing public sector salaries for a few years, and so on. But the tea party extremism is going to result in massive, massive lay-offs of gov’t workers at a time when the last thing we need is more unemployed people, and deficits can’t be beaten on the backs of the poor and middle class alone. And as we’ve all seen over the past decade, cutting taxes on the rich doesn’t help hiring / the economy / employment one single iota.
Not every GOP’er is going after the policemen, firemen, and teachers and so on who already make sacrifices and get paid little to do so. Mitch Daniels, for example, seems to get it.
Once again, the best the left can do is a tu quoque based on a supposition of how Republicans might possibly behave in a hypothetical situation.
(Except, it’s not hypothetical because gay marriage has been debated in several state legislatures without Republicans walking out.)
So, we need to run massive deficits and raise taxes to confiscatory levels for the sake of keeping unnecessary Government bureaucrats at their desks, is that what you’re saying?
The point is, when the GOP loses elections, you applaud them for doing whatever it takes to stop what you see as a runaway, radical Democratic agenda.
Nah–no one applauded the Republicans for going on strike, halting government, and attacking democracy itself. Oh, wait–the Republicans never did that….
…result in massive, massive lay-offs of gov’t workers….
What would be the downside of that, exactly? We’ve already seen the benefits of the gov’t workers currently on the payroll: Democratic Party State Senators on strike, holding their employers hostage against getting their own way; teachers lying to their employers about why they’re not at work; public union goons “protesting” at the private homes of politicians with whom they disagree….
Eric Hines
Dude! Your parents were public educators… and you are *that* bad at math? *That* bad at listening?
The point of Gov. Walker’s proposals is to save the jobs of “gov’t workers”. If his modest and necessary reforms don’t pass, due to *union extremism*, *then* he will have to undertake “massive, massive lay-offs of gov’t workers”.
Hmm, Democrat Mayor fires every teacher in Providence RI. I wonder if there will be nationwide organized protests.
Jeff, you want to pet my crocodile tears? You want to hug my boa constrictor? I didn’t think so. Boo-hoo. It’s time to live in the real world Jeff.
I don’t recall any Republicans fleeing the country prior to the national health care vote.
Thanks for setting me straight guys, the GOP would NEVER do anything like, say, shut (or threaten to shut) an entire goverment down because it didn’t get its way. Great point, I stand corrected.
Now I have to run and ask the Koch brothers what to do, right after after I praise myself from my fake Facebook account. Later …
Shorter Jeff:
Damn, you pounded me with facts, I’m going to go cry to mommy.
(Anyone notice this ‘Koch brothers’ meme started after all the links to Soros cash became common knowlege?)
Anyone notice this ‘Koch brothers’ meme started after all the links to Soros cash became common knowlege?
The left can’t deal with the fact that the American people have rejected socialism; they have to believe it was all the work of evil Capitalists.
Oh, Jeff, Jeff, you do repeat liberal talking points as if it’s your trade. Oh, please, please, please back up you assertions that the Koch Brothers are running the show. If they were running the show in Wisconsin, don’t you think the governor would recognize David Koch’s voice?
Republicans threatening to shut down government? Huh? Just because Democrats are saying Republicans are trying to do that doesn’t make it so.
oh wait, I see you started commenting up in #7, my apologies.
So, you call the GOP the party of “no”, so? Did they walk out on legislatures as Wisconsin Democrats are doing, preventing them from voting on issues. And are you criticizing the WIsconsin union & DNC-backed protesters from using the rhetoric your ascribe to the GOP? And have you criticized Democrats in the Senate from blocking votes on non-controversial judicial appointments when Bush made them? (Or perhaps you use the term non-controversial to reference controversies created by the Democrats and their allied interest groups to block Republican judicial appointments.)
And no, 60% of the country is not opposed to Republican attempts not to break public employee unions, but to restraint them. (You’d know that if you read this blog where I linked a poll showing just the opposite of your assertion.)
Oh, and please tell me where did I applaud, as you contend, those who called “every single Democratic attempt to govern socialism, fascism, nazism, trying to delegitimize the President”. I never did. Not even close.
You’ve got a severe case of projection here, projecting onto me, your stock image of an angry conservative. Please do read my posts and familiarize myself with my ideas before chiming in.
If we could just take over Congress and the White House and then hold a major anti-union vote the progs would have to leave the country in protest prior to the vote…then we could revoke their visas!