Wisconsin War on Scott Walker was training ground for #TheResistance War on Trump
How Walker survived politically is a lesson for the Trump administration.
In our report earlier, we noted that the “Resistance” to Donald Trump is unlike anything seen in the opposition to Obama, The “Resistance” Moves Towards Violence and Intimidation as Key Tactic.
The opposition to Trump is becoming increasingly violent, and explicitly seeks to drive political intimidation into personal spaces by confronting Republicans everywhere they walk, talk and eat.
This total war on Trump’s administration and supporters by the media, Democrats, and a vast array of well-funded leftist groups might seem like a reaction to … Trump. That would be a myopic view.
The tactics you are seeing play out nationally had a dry run.
That dry run was the 2011-2012 war on Scott Walker in Wisconsin after Republicans in the legislature passed public sector collective bargaining reform. A national coalition of progressive groups and unions launched a war on Walker, as did a Democratic prosecutor using the “John Doe” law.
That war on Walker had almost all of the tactics we are seeing in the anti-Trump Resistance, such as obstructive legislators, highly organized direct action, politicized trial judges, threats and intimidation, and invasion of personal spaces.
Obstructive Wisconsin Democratic legislators literally fled the state to Illinois to avoid a legislative quorum. Trial court judges issued outlandish injunctions, only to be overturned by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, but not before the damage was done to the political process. (The Wisconsin collective bargaining reform law ultimately was upheld in its entirety.)
Well-funded and well-organized leftist activists willing to engage in “direct action” such as taking over the State House:
Some of the protesters were so crazed that some locked their heads to railings in the State House:
(Image via JSOnline)
The activists even impersonated Walker in order to run sting operations on unsuspecting Walker supporters. So deep was the corruption of civil society in order to accommodate the protests, that doctors openly issued false medical notes so protesters could miss work.
Democratic party officials “joked” about violence, as personal intimidation at the homes of Republicans, including Walker, and were physically confronted in public spaces such as restaurants, even in D.C.
Republican legislators were threatened at home and were chased down and harassed as they went to work at the State House.
Even using a bus to escape the mob outside the State House offered no assurance of safety for Republican legislators:
The supposedly non-political bureaucracy was corrupted to serve anti-Walker purposes, as police union members openly called for insurrection and joined the protesters.
Yet through it all, Walker never took the bait, Republicans never responded in kind, and just kept pushing forward with their agenda to reform government.
It paid off, with Walker surviving the 2012 recall effort, Republicans maintaining their majorities, including on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and Wisconsin being a better place for the effort. There’s a lesson in there for the Trump administration.
[Featured Image: Wisconsin GOP Senator Glenn Grothman chased, trapped by hecklers, via YouTube]
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Ron Coleman
Comments
“… confronting Republicans everywhere they walk, talk and eat.
The real problem with this is that it doesn’t give Republicans (or Trump supporters) any reason to take “The Resistance” seriously … to reconsider their positions. It merely hardens the positions that are already held.
Most non-Resisters (perhaps Capacitors or Inductors) don’t se this as Trump v World.
Yes. We all know how well the Resistance worked against Gov. Walker, don’t we?
Meanwhile, back at the fever swamp…..
There’s a huge amount of speculation about the Seth Rich murder and the implications of a laptop he owned that might contain communications with Wikileaks, together with speculation as to where other evidence of such a connection might be found. This kind of speculation relating to other events has in the past been ephemeral, and later followed by the disclosure of interesting public documents. Maybe they will come up dry, this time, or maybe they will help solve a murder.
WikiLeaks always responds quickly to any misinformation about them. The fact that they have been retweeting stories about Seth Rich being the DNC leaker means they are endorsing the stories. So we know Seth was the leaker.
Which means the Russians were not the leakers.
Professional killings are professional. We will never know who did it, but at least we can know why.
The parents are surrounded by DNC operatives. I suppose they are embarrassed by having a son who helped elect Trump. They can’t possibly shed any light on the murder, because they have been kept in the dark, along with the rest of us.
Any examination of Walker should include a simultaneous review of John Kasich of Ohio and learn how not to do it.
Think this sort of encapsulates the “Re-raisonettes” entire problem.
https://theconservativetreehouse.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/preistap-mccabe-2.png
The situations of Walker and Trump aren’t really parallel.
Neither Trump nor his office are in any danger. There’s no way to “recall” a President. And there is not a shred of a ghost of a chance that the House will impeach Trump, even for the most ridiculous fabrications; and even if it did, no chance that the Senate would convict.
All that the Left is doing here is its usual game of being excruciating annoying. But I suspect they were all planning to do that anyway, Trump or no Trump. There’s no chance that it will be effective. Harassment of other Republicans is not harassment of Trump. Harassment of Trump voters doesn’t change the vote count of last November.
The best tactic? Pay no attention. Attack them in the Press, sure, but that doesn’t suck up many resources. Tweets are easy, and cost nothing. Violent attacks can be handled with the usual mechanisms of law enforcement as currently exist. Police chiefs who won’t do their jobs can be replaced by the usual methods. While no American President has been removed from office by impeachment, judges who are quite clearly and unambiguously acting illegally have been so removed; I’d like to see a few more.
In short, the Leftist assault on America is almost entirely mere noise; there’s little cause for extraordinary remedies. The dry run wasn’t Wisconsin, it was Weimar; but our Left doesn’t control the mechanisms of government, so even that parallel in no cause for alarm. Of course had Hillary won, the situation might be very serious. We know from FDR’s concentration camps just how far Democratic presidents are willing to go to protect themselves from imaginary enemies. But as things stand right now, we have nothing to fear but noise.
I think it’s a bit more serious than you think; I believe we’ll see an assassination attempt soon by someone on the left, not of POTUS (too hard) but of a Congressman or Senator.
The left is working themselves up to that, it won’t be long before one of them goes for it. Remember how last summer a radicalized BLM member assassinated 5 policemen in Dallas? Don’t buy into the nonsense happy talk that it happened just because of “one disturbed individual”, it didn’t. He had a lot of support, although they probably didn’t think he would take it as far as he did. But there’s a lot more of him out there, and they’re not going to wait too much longer.
There is much more going on than just leftist noise. College students are being wrecked and opportunities closed to them, jobs are being lost, corporate donations to non-left outfits are drying up, and people are being more careful in their speech when they choose to speak at all.
Meanwhile, the mayhem and the riots drive up insurance costs, and cost those companies everything that the insurers don’t cover, they have days / weeks of lost or curtailed business, they have added security costs to operate. The small businesses get crushed by this. Even business in the neighborhood, though not attacked, lose traffic to their stores, and share in the increased insurance costs.
At the government level the burden of regulation gets heavier and heavier, as business need to add more and more positions of “compliance managers” to keep up with the paperwork being demanded. Plus, of course, having to hire people that they’d rather not and pay them at a scale that is dictated outside of the value to the company.
No, there is a lot more going on than just noise and pixels.
They are closer than you think. Your solution is basically what we used in Wisconsin, “The best tactic? Pay no attention.”
Some attention to the more dangerous and hurtful actions needed addressing, but that’s a case by case basis and only to address the situation. Never did see the outlandish ‘Antifa’ crap. There were threats, but not actual direct violet masked thug action.
Your right, it’s not so much about removing Trump or was Walker as was just continuing to gin up the base, raise money, and just stick it in the eye or Republicans & conservatives
Like you said, this crap was going to happen to this level if ANY Republican won the White House.
Leave a Comment