It's the People that Matter, Not the Man at the Top

IMHO, the Wisconsin Recall Election was the most important vote for the Tea Party. Scott Walker won the 2011 gubernatorial race with tea party support and the movement exhausted a great deal of capital in Walker's stand against the excesses of Public Employee Unions.

As I understand, Walker supported collective bargaining for wages, but did not want the unions to be able to unilaterally set public policy.

See, if you have an unelected group that can set public policy, then you subvert the democratic process. Public employee unions essentially devolve into the King's Court where a corrupt, untouchable group of government officials simply divides the spoils of the state.

Oddly, one of the biggest area of contention is employee benefits (insurance). State benefit packages are often used a political troughs. The scandal with benefits is that so much of our "benefits" are skimmed off and used for political purposes.

I actually spent two days trying to write a blog post about the Wisconsin recall.

The truth is, I was so depressed about the presidential primary, that I couldn't complete the posts.

When I heard on the radio that the race was too close to call. I actually felt sick.

To my delight, Walker won the race 53% to 46%. My guess is that people lied on the exit polls. I lied the only time I gave an exit poll. (I told the pollster what the pollster what I thought she wanted to hear because I was wasn't sure who she was. I now avoid any questions about my ballot.)

I am SO GLAD Wisconsin rejected the recall.

When all is sad and done, the people matter more than any given elected official. The people of Wisconsin shone through. Hooray!

I am sad, however, that the Tea Party exhausted so much of its political clout on this public employee union issue while ignoring the much more important issue of health care reform.

I don't see Wisconsin as a great political win for the Tea Party because the series of action and reaction failed to result in new thinking. It simply left the state more divided than ever.

Only a partisan sees a deeply divided people as victory.

To me, the apparent fact that the Tea Party led to partisan division and not to new ideas suggests that the movement was a failure.

Where are the Tea Partiers willing to discuss ideas?

I would love more than anything to find such a group. I traveled three thousand miles last year in search for such a group, and found none.

But back to Wisconsin. I dislike Community Organizers of the Alinsky tradition because they organize one side of the community against the other resulting in greater division.

Reactionaries become mirrors of the things they react against. See, the Alinsky method is dependent on the right abandoning reason to react in a partisan manner.

I am distraught that Republicans have abandoned the fight for free market health reform to concentrate on partisanship.

It is the people that matter. Not the guy at the top. When Republicans abandon the war of ideas simply to get their man at the top, they set up the nation for failure in the long term.