Why won't Governor Walker accept unions' offer and declare victory? By Greg Sargent

[kpete]

Posted at 12:12 PM ET, 02/22/2011
Why won't Governor Walker accept unions' offer and declare victory?
By Greg Sargent

It's worth stating as clearly as possible that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is refusing to take a route out of the standoff that, while not giving him everything he wants, would allow him to declare victory over the public employee unions and even to assert that he had ground them down into submission.

As you know, the Wisconsin public employee unions have agreed to accept the wage and benefit reductions that Walker has asked for, in exchange for dropping his proposal to roll back their bargaining rights. Walker has refused.

Why? It isn't clear that there's any public support for this position in Wisconsin. One key finding from today's poll by the Dem firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner is this one showing overwhelming support for this compromise:


...his goal is nothing less than to completely break the unions, pure and simple, as part of a broader drive to destroy one of the last institutions in American life battling the creep of inequality and defending the economic interests of the working- and middle-class. The third reason is that Walker's intended audience is no longer his own constituents; it's national conservatives who share the above goals and see any compromise as needlessly delaying the long-coveted "Waterloo" moment for organized labor that they suddenly sense is within reach.
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the rest:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2011/02/why_wont_governor_walker_accep.html

[leveymg]

1. Isn't there a deadline coming up in a couple days for this bill to pass?

If there's no quorum in the WI Senate, it won't pass, and it's back to the drawing table for the GOP. The Dems shouldn't capitulate.

[Guilded Lilly]

2. duplicate post! sorry :) see below.

double posted...sorry!

[PA Democrat]

3. Because that is not what his corporate masters

put him into office to do. Walker isn't doing the "people's" work; he is doing the work of the corporate interests that brought him to the dance.

[el_bryanto]

4. Very solid analysis. To tea-parties, it's not victory if the other guy is still standing.

Sad really.

Bryant

[Guilded Lilly]

5. Your bolded paragraph is spot on and...

the Republican numbers in that poll are high because there are a lot of Republican teachers and public workers that this will affect adversely.

Walker isn't interested in compromise because he most likely has orders from the money machines to demolish a source of campaign financing for the Democrats. He wants to be their belligerant, union busting hero and gain their monetary support for his professional ambitions.

Now that corporations have been given the green light to corrupt the election process even further, there will be no stopping the lust for power and souless greed.

But you know, when these corporations have gone through the middle class and destroyed those hard working souls, who do you think their next lifeblood victims will be? The least of the wealthy of today. Those *now* wealthy will become the fodder for the next level of destruction.

Many of today's blustering Republican Governors etc will become tomorrow's has been grunt boys/girls.

The longer the Democrats and the people hold out, the less effective Walker will look.

[alterfurz]

6. why won't he compromise?--it is absolutely NOT in his nature

...take it from one who witnessed his autocratic 8-yr misrule of Milwaukee County, now teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

He won't bend, he'll have to be broken. Past successes make him smugly confident he can control and ride out the storm he has conjured up, but this one isn't just a tempest in a county teapot anymore. He has sown the wind here in Wisconsin, but can he remain standing in the whirlwind he will reap?

[Arkana]

7. Even Republicans are sharply split on the matter.

Both Wisconsin Dems and Indies are stacked high against Walker.

He's going to lose a lot of support and fast.