Is the Democrats’ Attempt To Recall Scott Walker A Mistake?

Powerline ^ | 12-16-11 | John Hinderaker

[afraidfortherepublic]

The national labor unions have accumulated more than 500,000 signatures on their petition to recall Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, so they are getting close. There is no process, apparently, for validating the signatures, so it is impossible to say how many are fraudulent. But it seems probable that one way or another, a recall election will take place in May. Will that election be a triumph for the Democrats?

Ann Althouse thinks not:

Let’s assume the signature-gatherers hit the mark and trigger a recall. Walker can only be removed if the Democrats come up with an opponent who beats him in the recall election. What are they going to use for money?

But the Democratic Party reported raising just under $1.2 million between July 1 and Dec. 10 to support its own role in the recall attempt. It has $360,000 in cash on hand.

But money is never the Democrats’ problem. As long as the national unions can extort money from their members against their will, there will be no shortage of cash on the left. I assume the pro-recall forces will outspend the pro-Walker forces by at least two or three to one.

Meanwhile, Walker is still raking money in, and under state law there is no limit on donations, and some people are handing him checks in excess of $200,000.

That is correct. There is currently a window in which you can contribute whatever you want to Walker’s campaign. As I wrote here, you should. You can donate to Walker’s re-election campaign here. Don’t worry if you can only spare a few dollars. Every little bit helps.

This money will flood into an immense advertising campaign next year. Next year, when all the presidential candidates are trying to get attention and when there’s a Senate race here in Wisconsin. Walker will continue to collect donations and spend it freely to promote the conservative agenda in Wisconsin, lending collateral assistance to the Republican candidates in the other 2012 elections. (And candidates in the regular elections have limits on the amounts donors can give them.)

Wisconsin is a key swing state in the presidential election. And Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Herb Kohl could be the one that tips the Senate Republican. The Walker recall could spell nationwide disaster for Democrats.

I certainly hope so, but that is an awfully optimistic assessment. Much more money will be spent to unseat Governor Walker than to re-elect him. On the other hand, the Democrats don’t have a candidate, and it is very weird to recall a governor for doing exactly what he promised to do when he ran for office.

I do think Ann is right that Wisconsin will be the eye of the hurricane in 2012 (or one of them, anyway). I would love to see Walker raise so much money that he can contribute to other Republican campaigns, but that strikes me as highly unlikely. Still, Ann may be right that the Walker recall is a strategic blunder by the Democrats. They chose to turn Wisconsin into Armageddon, betting that they had a better chance of recalling Walker in 2012 than defeating him in 2014, when the success of his policies would be apparent to nearly everyone. If they lose–as I think they will–the lesson will be that honest politicians can stand up to the union bullies, and win.

More from Power Line

[afraidfortherepublic]

Is a plow different from a sickle?

A plow breaks ground so the farmer can plant seed. A sicle reaps what the farmer has sown. Do you see a difference?

[bert]

yes, you are right

[zeugma]

Something that might be worth setting up, would be a 'distributed verification project', built on the lines of the Distributed Proofreading project run by Project Gutenberg. What they do is scan a book in, (in this case it would be pages of petitions), then they have a page where you can see an image of the proofread page, and a section of text that the OCR software translated it as. As a proofreader, you compare the image to the OCR text and correct any typos. You get a random page (within a given book)to proof, so you have no real control over exactly what it is that you're going to proofread. As each page is proofed, it is set aside, then another round of proofing is done on it. Here's where we could catch people who were trying to game the proofing. If the second round proofer gets a page that was maliciously changed or something, the entire work product of the first proofer could be flagged for review.

If you had just a thousand people (surely the GOP, being a national party could put together a thousand people to do something) proofing one page of signatures a day, that's a thousand pages a day. If you had a thousand people who took an hour of their time to do 10 or so pages, that's 10,000 pages processed in an hour.I don't know how many pages would need to be done, but one would think that going through all the signatures in this way could be done pretty quickly, with the resultant text being something that would be easy to import into a database.

The GOP has money. If they actually care about free and fair elections, they could easily afford to invest in something like this, as it wouldn't be just a one-time project. It could also be used to validate voting rolls, and a lot of other stuff.

[ozaukeemom]

The recallers are so arrogant. A guy was on the news in Madison bragging about how many of the recall petitions he signed! We saw some of them down in Port near the high school waving signs. I cannot believe how many libs there are in Ozaukee. What on earth is the recall based on? Doing what he promised?

[BenKenobi]

I used to work as a canvasser. I stand behind every signature I collected as a for real signature, signed and collected. :)

Maybe some of the folks are dishonest, but what’s the point?

[Oatka]

I signed up but haven’t had any verification email. Are they sending out anything to let you know your application has been accepted?

[Oatka]

If Wisconsin wants to have a willy nilly recall process they should add to the chaos by saying there can be an anti-recall petition. . . . I’d say minimum thresholds of signatures need to be gained, but since they aren’t checking them why bother. It’s really a race to see who can forge the most signatures.

Sounds like a plan, and if possible, our side ought to do it. Since the GAB says they won't verify signatures as long as they have a valid WI address, then we too can sign "Adolph Hitler", "Mickey Mouse", ad nauseum. (If they checking to see if the addresses are valid, then how much trouble to validate the names - at least the obvious fraudulent ones?)

[Jack Hydrazine]

How many like Mickey Mouse have signed the recall petition?

[FlingWingFlyer]

I think that if “Mickey Mouse” and “Adolf Hitler” want Gov. Walker recalled, we are in big trouble. What’s really weird is that I didn’t know “Mickey Mouse” and “Adolf Hitler” even lived in Wisconsin. The communist DemocRATS and the union mafia have turned our elections into a big joke.

[Georgia Girl 2]

It is mega hard to recall a governor. They did it in CA but he was a real POS. I seriously doubt there is any chance of recalling Walker.

[hal ogen]

No...Being a DIMocRAT is a mistake.

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

Those symbols stand for farming, manufacturing, fishing and mining...all prominent in Wisconsin history.

It all started with fur trapping/trading by French Canadian Voyageurs.

Regards,
GtG

[Verginius Rufus]

Wisconsin became a state in 1848...the same year that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto

Coincidence? I think not.

[bert]

Not only that but in 1917, the year of the Communist revolution, NPR began on Wisconsin public radio.

It just keeps getting worse and worse

[Verginius Rufus]

Are you kidding? I thought the very first radio broadcasts were in 1920.

[afraidfortherepublic]

That’s sort of what they’re doing.

[bert]

I did misspeak. It was not NPR, but WPR, however it was 1917

“Wisconsin Public Radio - Home

Since 1917, Wisconsin Public Radio has been offering listeners a stimulating means by which to exchange ideas, an efficient way to get caught up on the day’s news ...
www.wpr.org”

So, never mind

[Fu-fu2]

Something to work on before the 2012 elections....

God Bless Scott Walker

[Verginius Rufus]

I was going by what Frederick Lewis Allen says in Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties (first published in 1931):

"The first broadcasting station had been opened in East Pittsburgh on November 2, 1920--a date which school children may some day have to learn--to carry the Harding-Cox election returns. This was station KDKA, operated by the Westinghouse Company." (p. 64)

But elsewhere Allen speaks of some earlier efforts to broadcast speeches and music.

[ozaukeemom]

Not that it is anything really to be proud of any longer, but from what I understand, the Republican party started here in Wisconsin.
There are a lot of good conservatives here. Madison and Milwaukee and some other college towns muck it up just like other states. The unions are a cancer here like other places. The Dems will lie and cheat and steal as they generally do. It makes it that much sweeter when we do prevail. I wish they would make examples of the cheaters, but we know it will not happen. Look at Gwen Moore as a prime example. I have to believe that Walker will get through this idiotic recall nonsense and be able to continue his work.