In an effort to reverse the pummeling they are getting in public opinion over the Wisconsin affair, Democrats have invented a new line of attack, which the legacy media is repeating uncritically. Here’s MSNBC’s Chris Matthews:
My question of course is why does the Governor pick on the unions that didn’t endorse him in the last campaign but give a free ride to the firefighters and the cops who did and the localities? Why did they get off and are allowed to continue to negotiate collectively?
(ASIDE: I love the “of course”. That’s the Democratic attack narrative; “of course” that’s his question.) And here’s CBS’s Chris Wragge:
You say this is a modest request. Now some state workers have been hit harder than others. Your teachers union, which votes Democratic under normal circumstances, hit very hard. Yet your police, state trooper, firemen unions, who all supported and endorsed you, did not get touched in any of this. Why is that?
The allegation is that Governor Walker is letting his friends off, while punishing his enemies.
Walker says the allegation is ridiculous; he is exempting police and fire fighters because he doesn’t want public safety threatened. And events have proven the wisdom of his policy: police and fire fighters can’t legally strike in Wisconsin, but neither can teachers. That hasn’t kept the teachers from walking off the job illegally for days. When teachers strike it inconveniences people and hurts education, when police and fire fighters strike people die.
But that’s all beside the point, because the premise of the attack isn’t true. Walker did not get most of the police and fire fighter endorsements. As he explains to Wragge:
Well, Chris – Chris that actually is not true. There are 314 fire and police unions in the state. Four of them endorsed me. All the rest endorsed my opponent.
So 310 of 314 opposed Walker. Moreover, the large statewide unions of police and fire fighters both endorsed Walker’s opponent. If the legacy media had made even a cursory effort to check the facts before parroting the Democratic line of attack, they would have learned there was no truth to it.
But here’s what is particularly galling about this attack: What Democrats are unfairly accusing Governor Walker of — rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies — is standard practice for the Democrats. The best recent example is the Democrats’ health care nationalization law, which contains a big new tax on medical devices. The reason they levied the tax on the medical device industry as opposed to some other is because the industry was insufficiently enthusiastic in its support for health care nationalization. Industries that supported the effort were left alone, and those that did not were punished.
(Via Instapundit.)
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