Ohio Issue 2: Let’s not over-react or fall for media templates

Issue 2 in Ohio has failed. Unions poured a gazillion dollars into Ohio and won. Despite having a sense of this outcome for some time it still stings. Believe it or not, a great many felt that these reforms were important steps in bring fiscal and structural sanity to government. The voters clearly did not get that message.

The media is going to try and play this as horse race politics. Governor John Kasich lost and the Democrats won. And obviously, in some important sense – even if only in the fact the story and perspective being conventional wisdom – this is true. Kasich and Republicans passed this legislation and it has been rejected. Fair enough.

But I personally believe there is a simpler explanation. Voters like their local cops, firefighters, nurses and teachers. In many ways, they idealize these type of positions even if they don’t like the state of education or public safety, etc. Thus opponents of reform had a very easy and emotionally effective message: Senate Bill 5 is an attack on the “everyday heroes” who protect our communities. It doesn’t really matter if this was true or not. In a 30 second ad it is easy to say and makes an emotional connection. This is a huge advantage in a statewide ballot issue.

Combine this with the huge financial advantage the opponents had (unions could take dues from union members regardless of their political beliefs and spend it on this election) and you have an uphill battle for supporters (and of course there is a minority of voters – public sector and labor unions – who are simply voting their self-interest). All they had to do was blanket the state with pictures of police and firefighters opposed to the issue and the lasting impression is that the bill is an attack on the people we value the most in our communities.

We can debate the wisdom of keeping fire and saftey forces in the bill (and the larger strategy & process) later. But what I want to note tonight is that this is not an ideological victory in my mind. I don’t believe voters saw this as a smaller or larger government debate. Nor was it about lowering or raising taxes. It was about not attacking public safety. It was about a simple but effective message with overwhelming financial superiority. The nature of modern elections means this was not an upset but par for the course given the nature of popular ballot issues.

Is Kasich unpopular? Sure, the economy sucks and doesn’t look good any time soon. People tend to blame people at the top. Kasich didn’t have any real political capital left to win on this issue. But that doesn’t mean Kasich is suddenly a defeated governor. He is going to ultimately be judged on the success of his policies in the medium to long term. He passed a budget that puts Ohio on a path to success. He is fundamentally redefining economic development in this state and he is selling Ohio like mad. If the Ohio economy gets better and the policies he has implemented begin to bear fruit he will be just fine.

And this is not the sign of GOP over-reach either. If this was such an ideological turning of the tide that how to explain the passage of Issue 3 – a clear repudiation of health care mandates? If Ohio voters suddenly turned to the left that win seems to make little sense. I think it is much easier to see this as another reflection of message and popular sentiment. People saw health care mandates as threat to their care and likely to raise costs. They rejected the idea. Exactly how is this going to help Democrats (or the president for example) in Ohio?

If Democrats think the ground has shifted significantly I think they are getting carried away. Unions felt their backs were up against the wall and they leveraged their financial advantage to great effect. They rallied the troops and used their message, however deceptive, to great effect. This is a big win. I get that.

But off-year ballot issues of this nature do not mean fundamental change. As I said on twitter, “If you have an emotionally effective message, and can spend five times as much, you have a good chance of winning ballot issues.” This is not sea change in political philosophy or a rejection of the party in power (neither party are particularly popular when it comes right down to it).

So ignore the union gloating and the media stories about how independents reject extremism and over-reach. Instead, conservatives need to find ways to better communicate their ideas and continue to build the institutions and organizations that can move their ideas and policies forward. Fiscal reality is not going to change. The nature of what government can and can’t accomplish given its nature and this fiscal reality isn’t going to magically change because of this vote.

Conservatives took one on the chin, yes, but the larger war is far from clear. There are even bigger battles that lie ahead. Let’s get ready.

Below was a piece written by Larry Schweikart, a professor at U of Dayton and one of the preeminent historians in the United State. He wrote this piece this morning and puts what happened in the Ohio election yesterday in focus. Take heart one man’s victory as they say is another man’s defeat. He is also a Freeper.............

Victories and Defeats, perceptions and realities

Election day in November of 2011 reinforced the difference between perceptions and realities, victories and defeats. Ohio’s SB-5 was repealed by a 61-39% margin (Issue 2), while Issue 3, Ohio’s choice to opt-out of Obamacare by an even larger margin (65.6 to 34.4%) sent conflicting signals. Or did they?
First, it’s important to remember that there are big differences between real victories and perceived victories. The debt-ceiling/budget showdown is now widely viewed, by both sides of the aisle, as a Republican “victory,” even though conservatives hardly got anything of substance out of the deal. But there is no question it badly damaged Obama with his liberal-whacko base (good) and that some (probably not many) left him for good over that (even better). If you go back to George W. Bush’s War on Terror, recent events involving the killing of Osama bin Ladin and the overthrow of Khaddafi, while attributed in some variations to Obama, were really results of Bush policies.
Throughout the War on Terror, I think it’s safe to say that Bush was far more concerned about the realities of keeping America safe than he was about the PR game of perceptions. This led him to take a beating in the press, probably helped cost the Republicans the Senate in 2006, an enabled the Dems to pound him for seven years at the expense of the GOP and conservatives as a whole. Having met Bush briefly, I would conclude that in his mind if that was the tradeoff, he’d take American security for eight years over political victories or receiving credit.
So what about Ohio? I don’t think the Issue 2 results are as bad as they seem. First, the state GOP did not do an effective PR job of selling this early. They allowed the Dems to set the terms of the debate and define it as an issue of keeping people safe from fires and crime and keeping teachers. Second-—and this is critical for conservatives in all these unionized, sinking states to understand-—this was a pyrrhic victory in the sense that the unions spent millions here having already spent more millions in Wisconsin on the (failed) recalls. It won’t be good for Ohio residents in the short term, but in the strategic sense, this was a case of Ulysses Grant’s comment of having one army “hold a leg while the other one skins.”
The unions appear to me to be in the same shape as the Nazi army on the east front in 1944: rapidly running out of manpower and resources, and the defeat of SB5 will only cause the number of union workers to decline further as the cities and municipalities, now, are forced to do the dirty work.
There is a finite limit to union funds and energy to organize and whine and complain. On the strategic battlefield, they are 1-1 without even touching Michigan yet-—and poorer by a boatload.
LS’s strategy for OH? Pass the most popular part of SB5 again, immediately. Let’s see if the union thugs can do it again. I don’t think they can. Then pass another, then another. In the meantime Ohio now has a balanced budget, and that will only rebound to Kasich’s favor over time.
The opt-out of Obamacare in Issue 3 is equally telling. This is a genuine victory and a perceived victory. No question the message this sent. Moreover, it is interesting that in the news now, the phrase is “Obamacare,” associating a bad plan with a toxic politician.
You could see this in Virginia, where the GOP effectively gained control of the state senate for only the second time since Reconstruction. Politicians there stayed as far away from Zero as geography would allow.
Strategically, the perceived union win in OH will become meaningless, while the genuine coffer-busting attempts to stop Governor Walker in WI and SB5 in OH will prove setbacks from which the unions, long-term, won’t recover. When combined with lost union jobs in OH, it’s a war of attrition that we will eventually win. But the clear defeat of Obamacare won’t need to wait for any future developments to show just how badly the Dems are screwed in the next election cycle.

This was an off year election, low voter turn out was to be expected. Non Presidential election year, no congressional seats in Ohio in the election. The Unions were able to turn out the vote.

Despite the people “liking” their fire fighters and police officers they must be able to know they are backed by union thugs, their union dues go to support the leftist marxist President Obama and the deliberately intentional destruction of this nation’s free market capitalist economy, their support for the court certified liar felon President Bill Clinton never faltered.

People “like” this?

Despite often spirited displays of patriotism these public “servants” will vote their state and ther nation to ruin if it meant more money in their pockets.

What would the people “LIKE” about any of this?

Now the unions and these “liked” public servants will be leading the call to raise taxes, or the lay offs will ensue.

The people will like this also?

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