If it weren't obvious before, we see just how beholden the Democratic party is to public unions for support. From fleeing the state to prevent a quorum to prevent the elected representatives of Wisconsin from completing their jobs, to comparing Governor Walker to Hitler, the Democrats and their supporters have engaged in political warfare to preserve union power in Wisconsin. You would only do this if such power was important to you.
Denying a quorum from being present is an abuse of legislative rules from a time when communications were slow and traveling from a legislator's home to the capital took a long time. Mandating a minimum quorum to vote on a bill therefore was an attempt to prevent members from being denied an opportunity to participate in voting on a bill.
Some have compared denying quorum to the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, whose purpose is to give the minority certain rights if they feel passionately about an issue, but that is a wrong analogy. Requiring a quorum is to allow legislators the time to get to the capital for a legislative session, or to prevent a majority from calling the legislature into session at a time or location that is difficult for the minority to attend and hence tipping the scales in the majority's advantage by denying the minority from being able to participate in the vote.
With modern communication and travel, such concerns are not relevant and could be satisfied with appropriate advance notice provisions to hold a legislative session. Instead, the Wisconsin Democrats used the quorum rules to prevent the legislature from operating, even though they had plenty of time to attend the legislative session.
The language directed at Governor Walker, such as comparing him to Hitler or Hosni Mubarak, is deeply offensive on many levels. Political debates that turn into name-calling don't advance the public's knowledge of the issues and in fact, suggest the name-caller can't advance facts or logic to make his case, so he uses invective instead.
Moreover, after so much commentary about having a civil tone of political discourse in the country after the shooting of the Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in January, we now see clearly that such comments were made for an attempted partisan advantage, and not for heartfelt convictions. Many of the commentators or politicians who implicitly or explicitly criticized the Tea Party or Republicans for falsely claiming their rhetoric had anything to do with the Giffords' shooting either have been silent while abusive language has been heaped on Governor Walker or have engaged in such rhetoric themselves. This further undermines the political culture in this country.
We also have learned that union thugs will direct their anger to the people in the public an large. Unions having now turned their attention to Wisconsin businesses, having sent a letter to Wisconsin business owners saying that if you don't actively support union efforts against Governor Walker, the unions will engage in boycotts of your business.
Interestingly, Wisconsin Democrats conceded to the benefit reductions in the new law, but wouldn't agree to the provisions that allowed state workers to opt out of the union or having the right to not have their union dues used for political donations. Why engage in all-out political warfare if the employee benefit issue was off the table?
Because the real issue is union power and campaign contributions to Democrats. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, when Indiana passed a similar law a few years ago, less than 10% of union members continued paying union dues. And without those dues, union leaders lose their own jobs, have to reduce their compensation to reflect diminished union financial resources, and reduce political campaign contributions which go overwhelmingly to Democrats.
And THIS loss of union money, more than the false right to be in a government union, is why the Democrats and their union allies are up in arms about the events in Wisconsin.
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