Republicans this year asked Governor Scott Walker of
Wisconsin, much maligned by union folk, to give the keynote address at the
Prescott Bush Awards dinner in Stamford.
Mr. Walker is a grown-up, so his address was low key,
interspersed with amusing vignettes. There was very little coverage of Mr.
Walker’s remarks in Connecticut’s media. Most of the media accounts went for
the color and passed over the discomforting
substance.
Unions were protesting outside the building, and someone was
thoughtful enough to bring along the usual protest props. A photograph of one protesting
group shows several union workers wearing cardboard cutout faces of the Koch
brothers pulling puppet strings attached to another union worker wearing a
Walker face. There are pictures galore in the Greenwich Times report:
of Republican Senate leader John McKinney, who was given the Prescott Bush
award this year; of Mr. Walker; of prominent Republicans in the state and of
Linda McMahon, always good for a line or two in a lede story.
But one searches in vain for comprehensive coverage of
Mr. Walker’s address and finds just a few scattered references here and there,
studding the stories like glittering political sequins.
When readers of newspapers in the Lincoln era wanted to know
what two major politicians debating each other for a Senate seat in Illinois
actually said during their debates, they had only to turn to their newspapers
to find there the transcribed speeches of Abe Lincoln and Steven Douglas. Republican
papers polished the Lincoln oratory, and Democratic papers polished the apple
for Douglas. Those days are gone, and with them a good amount of newspaper credibility
– not to mention readers.
What precisely did Mr. Walker say to Republicans at the
Prescott Bush Dinner?
Ameriborn News TV put up the speech here. And so while Mr. Walker’s address is
accessible, the substance of the address has not been sufficiently reported in
Connecticut’s print media.
Republicans, Mr. Walker said to the sea of Republican faces in
his audience, have reason to be optimistic. Republicans now control governor’s
offices in 30 states. This was not always the case: “A lot of those states in
2010 were pretty blue. In fact, in my case, four years ago when I thought about
running for governor and announced in April of 2009, everything in our state
was controlled by Democrats: both Houses of the legislature, the governor, the
lieutenant governor, both U.S. Senator’s and the majority members of the House
of representatives.”
Surely Republicans in the audience, if not union members in
the streets outside, could well appreciate the parallel circumstances.
Connecticut has been drifting in the direction of a one party state for years,
a fait accompli celebrated by Democrats four years ago when then Mayor of
Stamford Dan Malloy -- Dannel Malloy, since becoming governor -- won his
contest against Republican contender Tom Foley, who lost to Mr. Malloy by the
thinnest of margins. Currently there are 52 Republicans and 99 Democrats in the State House and 14 Republicans and 22 Democrats in the
State Senate. Democrats have controlled
the Senate since 1996 and the House since 1986. Following Mr. Malloy’s victory,
Democrats captured all the political marbles. As a practical political matter,
this meant that Democrats in the state no longer needed to involve Republicans
in their deliberations.
Upon assuming
office, Mr. Malloy felt confident enough to shoo Republican leaders in the
General Assembly out of the room when he and Majority Democrats were cobbling
together a budget satisfactory to SEBAC, a coalition of unions authorized to
negotiate contracts with the governor. Marching under the banner of “shared
sacrifice,” Mr. Malloy imposed on the state the largest tax increase in its history.
This increase followed the second largest tax increase in state history, the
Lowell Weicker income tax of 1991. After having given a leg up to Mr. Malloy during
a special session of the General Assembly called to address the state’s
deepening spending problems, Republicans once again, unsurprisingly, find themselves in Coventry on current budget discussions. One party states do not need bystander
parties to govern.
The Malloy-SEBAC budget was never in balance. Even worse, negotiated
incremental raises in salaries and benefits for union workers amounting to about
9 percent far into the future tied the governor’s hands behind his back in
future budget negotiations. His school initiatives were opposed by teacher
unions that benefited from his largess, and red ink, like some impish devil,
kept popping out of the budget woodwork every time Comptroller Kevin Lembo
screwed the jewelers loop into his eye.
Wisconsin and
Connecticut are trains passing each other in the night in different directions.
Mr. Walker thought Connecticut Republicans could learn important lessons from
his own bruising but ultimately successful campaign and political strategy.
“Today,” Mr.
Walker continued, “everything’s flipped. Both my legislative houses are
Republican. The governor, one of the U.S. Senate seats and the majority seats
in the House of Representatives are Republican.”
This political
miracle was received with exuberant applause from Republicans in the audience. Wisconsin
showcased a breathtaking change of events. The union members prowling and
scowling outside the building for the benefit of news photographers hungry for
color have not yet recovered from the whiplash. John Olsten, the President of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, groused, "He [Mr. Walker]
surely is not what you would call a fit in the state of Connecticut.” Nor, come
to think of it, are any of few Walker-like Republicans in the General Assembly; such would
seem to be the message from both leading Democrats and the governor, who have
successfully rendered politically impotent any Republican presumptuous enough to
unfurl Mr. Malloy’s “fair share” flag by cutting spending.
Such was the case in Wisconsin before the advent of Mr.
Walker. Almost in the twinkling of an eye, the stage set, the actors and the
political narrative all changed.
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