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]
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Comments
Agreed.
RE: “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.”
…because the #Resistance was just soooo successful in WI that Walker couldn’t win recalls and Hillary won the state in a landslide.
Repeat after me…
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over yet expecting a different result.
This is how you got Trump and this is how you will get more Trump.
Please do carry on…
One is not quite like the other.
While Walker suffered attacks on a near daily basis, it was not a full scale assault from both parties and the national fake news “media”.
I doubt the way Walker handled it will work here.
Walker and the Wisconsin GOP had a plan to move forward and the GOP in Congress does not – and they don’t all support Trump (see McStain, RINO), which hurts the Donald badly.
Trump needed to figure out a strategy long ago to deal with the MSM. Instead he’s lurching from one fake news story to another and his team hasn’t a clue.
Congress is the largest roadblock at this point.
“Trump needed to figure out a strategy long ago to deal with the MSM.”
What is your strategy?
Some of us think he did does have a strategy, call them out for the liars they are. Just because some people get the vapors over the truth doesn’t make it less true.
I really want to know what strategy you think will be effective against a “media” dedicated to communism in this country.
Trump needs to keep on doing things, as he has been — not the tweets, but the substantive actions like appointments to federal offices, review of regulations, and the effort to reduce the size of the federal workforce and streamline its operations.
People living in the Swamp in the DC area, and in the NY Swamp, actually care about what the Washington Post and New York Times print and think. Much of the country doesn’t any more.
With reference to the cascade of leaks, who operates and services the recording equipment in the White House offices? When the administration changed, was a security sweep done? How many committed leftists are still working there, and how many of them would self-righteously leak either true or false information for “The Resistance?”
Even Trump voters who don’t idolize the man are unlikely to be persuaded by all of this leftist garbage and the increasing number of incidents of leftist violence.
What Walker did, and still does here in Wisconsin, is keep calm and not to feel the need to respond to every liberal fool or accusation. Thus even many Democrats here in Wisconsin see him as rational and the really insane Dem party in this state as the evil lunatics they have become.
He stays above the fray most of the time. It would serve Trump better than barking back at every lap dog in the media.
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