This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
After many feints in this direction dating back to 1996, Newt Gingrich seems to be finally preparing a run for president. Generally, he is not being taken as seriously as potential candidates like Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee–or even D.C. insider heartthrobs such as Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels, and Chris Christie. I agree with this assessment of Gingrich’s potential, to an extent; he’s the opposite of a fresh new face, and the guy’s baggage rivals Charlie Sheen’s. Yet having carefully watched Gingrich up close since he was a Rockefeller Republican in the 1970s, I also know that he is a master of tactical reinvention: a microcosm of the modern Republican Party contained in one complicated man. And at least superficially, he seems to have transmuted himself into exactly what the lost Tea Party Republican is yearning for this election cycle.
In the 1970s, I was a budding Georgia political junkie (and, actually, a Republican activist). I recall Gingrich, whom I first met at a Republican state party convention, as an overtly eccentric and extremely talkative history professor at West Georgia College who lived a sort of strange double life as a politician obsessed with getting elected to Congress. He had been born in Pennsylvania, landed in Georgia during high school, and as a graduate student at Tulane University in 1968 became the Southern regional director for the brief and unsuccessful presidential campaign of the liberal Nelson Rockefeller–not the sort of item a Southern Republican in those days usually wanted on his resume, but a first step on the political ladder nonetheless.
A few years later, having fathered two children with his high school math teacher (whom he had married at the age of 19), Gingrich returned to Georgia and launched his electoral career, running for Congress in 1974 and again in 1976. His incumbent opponent was John Flynt, an old-fashioned conservative Democrat best known for being on the League of Conservation Voters’ “Dirty Dozen” list of environmental reactionaries. Unlike many Georgia Republicans who sought to out-flank Dixiecrats by coming across as better-bred right-wing extremists, Gingrich ran to Flynt’s left, emphasizing environmentalist and “reform” themes, and enlisting significant support from liberal Democrats. Unfortunately for him, these were the two worst election cycles for Georgia Republicans since the 1950s (the Watergate election of 1974 and Jimmy Carter’s Georgia landslide of 1976), and he lost narrowly both times.
But then Flynt retired, just as Gingrich’s form of liberal Republicanism was falling out of fashion nationwide, in the run-up to Ronald Reagan’s election as president in 1980. When Gingrich ran for Congress again in 1978, this time against a more conventional Democrat, he reinvented himself as a fighting conservative focused on anti-tax and anti-welfare messages. He also burnished his conservative credentials by heading up a statewide group opposed to President Carter’s Panama Canal Treaty, a major right-wing (and specifically Reaganite) cause at the time. Gingrich won as a newly minted conservative, riding a conservative trend in his state and the country. It’s hard to know whether his earlier liberal persona, which seemed consistent with his private behavior and the polyglot crew of environmentalists he hung out with at West Georgia, or his later conservative incarnation was more genuine. But it is clear his turn to the right was well timed, and launched him not only into Congress but into a career as a national political celebrity.
From the moment he arrived in Congress, Gingrich aligned himself with a rapidly growing group of young supply-side Republicans, and became especially well known for advocating confrontational tactics against Democrats, to the chagrin of his old base of moderate-to-liberal supporters back home (many of them were also close to Gingrich’s wife, whom he divorced in 1980 while she was recovering from cancer, after a bitter financial dispute). He was also an energetic purveyor of right-wing agitprop: As a staffer in the Georgia governor’s office during that period, I recall having to find a nice way to reject his pleadings that the state officially declare a “Lessons of Granada Day” to impress upon schoolchildren and the citizenry at large the importance of that great Reagan military victory. By the mid-to-late 1980s, when Gingrich began his climb into the House Republican leadership, he was considered more a threat to the traditional mores of the congressional GOP than to Democrats. His own ideology, now staunchly conservative but sprinkled with vague futurist themes (“I see myself as representing the conservative wing of the postindustrial society” he once said), was nicely attuned to the “Morning in America” times.
Gingrich, of course, rose to the summit of power in 1994 and then quickly descended into infamy when he lost a humiliating budget battle with Bill Clinton, and subsequently attempted to impeach the president over Monica Lewinsky amid revelations about an extramarital affair of his own. But the lesson of Gingrich’s early years is that he has a jeweler’s eye for a political opening and a willingness to transform himself as necessary to exploit such opportunities when they arise. This could be one of those times: Because the 2012 Republican field is exceedingly weak in ways that would benefit Gingrich, he could end up in a surprisingly good electoral position if he decides to run.
Take Iowa, where ostensible frontrunner Mitt Romney is likely to put in a minimal effort (given his upset loss to Mike Huckabee in 2008), and popular Fox News contributors Huckabee and Palin may not show up at all because they prefer to keep their day jobs. According to a recent analysis by Iowa Republican insider Craig Robinson, Gingrich actually ranks first in terms of positioning for the Iowa Caucus: He has already spent considerable time there, along with other early caucus and primary states, and cozied up to the state’s very powerful Christian Right faction by writing a book alleging an abandonment of God by American liberal elites. Moreover, one of his ideological heresies that annoys conservatives elsewhere–his longtime support for ethanol subsidies–is actually a big plus in Iowa. If he wins or places there, and then survives Nevada and New Hampshire, he could do well in the Southern primaries thanks to his ties to the region.
More generally, he has positioned himself well to take advantage of a number of issues that obsess the modern right. In addition to courting the Christian Right and describing the Obama administration as a “secular socialist machine,” he has gone further than any putative presidential candidate in railing against the alleged threat of Islam at home and abroad, even hyping the phantom menace of creeping Sharia law in the United States. And, in a Republican electorate that is hungry for a fiery, uninhibited radical like Palin or Michele Bachmann–but is also attracted to wonky “ideas men” like Paul Ryan or Mitch Daniels–Gingrich can plausibly claim to be both. As the last speaker to shut down the federal government and the leader of the “Republican Revolution,” he has serious bomb-thrower credentials; and, ironically, his fall from grace in 1998 saved him from complicity in George W. Bush’s big-government conservatism, which Tea Partiers deplore. Yet he is also constantly spitting out sunny, whiz-bang ideas, from a pet scheme to fix Social Security to a plan that would force every American child to take gym class. He’s still very much the college professor intent on impressing his students with interesting, if half-baked thoughts, all delivered with the deceptive certainty of a born salesman.
The downside of a Gingrich candidacy is quite clear. He did, after all, become something of a national pariah the last time he got his hands on power in Washington. His marital history alone–which includes two divorces from chronically ill wives, quickly replaced by younger women–could provide fatal ammunition for an oppo researcher who wants to tar him in the eyes of Christian conservatives and ordinary women voters alike. But the Republican Party electorate is clearly desperate, deluded, and filled with ennui right now. Everything we know about the adaptable Gingrich tells us that he will bend over backwards to give Republican audiences what they want, whether or not it comports with what he was saying the day before yesterday. In this strange environment, that might be all that’s necessary.

Spiking world oil prices, mainly attributable to the instability in the Middle East, are helping (and I wouldn’t use a stronger word, given the well-known propensities of the oil industry to take advantage of news on oil prices to disproportionately jack up U.S. retail prices and harvest higher profits) boost pump prices.
Can we now expect a return to “Drill, Baby, Drill” rhetoric from Republicans who want to promote the utterly false belief that we can somehow divorce the domestic petroleum market from global markets by expanded U.S. production?
Maybe, but thanks to memories of the BP spill, Republicans are a little hesitant to cry for expanded offshore drilling. For one thing, there are a lot bigger economic problems facing the country and its citizens than $4 gasoline. As the New York Times‘ Caucus blog explains:

[T]he political dynamics surrounding oil exploration are very different in 2011 than they were in 2008, making it less obvious that Mr. Obama’s Republican challengers can use the issue to their advantage.
And despite the consumer pain, most economists from across the political spectrum say that they do not yet expect the price of oil to do significant damage to the economic recovery in the coming months.

Still, the web page of American Solutions, the Newt Gingrich-created group that originated the 2008 “Drill Here, Drill Now” campaign among Republicans, is full of daily attacks on Obama for allegedly abetting gas price increases through his stubborn opposition to maximum domestic oil drilling.
As the 2012 presidential cycle warms up, it wouldn’t be surprising if Gingrich and/or some of his other potential rivals raise the old battle cry again, particularly in states where there’s no immediate fear of the consequences of expanded offshore drilling. It’s not as though anyone in today’s GOP is going to object to dependence on fossil fuels out of concern for global climate change.

When Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour went out of his way in Washington this week to disrespect Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health reform law, it was understandably covered as a political story. Yes, Barbour’s snark was yet another indication that Romney is going to have to defend “RomneyCare,” and try to distinguish it from “ObamaCare,” virtually every day on the 2012 presidential campaign trail. I’m among the considerable number of political observers who don’t think he’ll be able to successfully pull that off.
But pure politics aside, Barbour’s statement offers a rare candid glimpse into the underlying thinking of conservatives about health reform that is often buried under all the rhetoric about “socialism” and “government takeover of health care” and “death panels” and so forth. TNR’s Jonathan Cohn pointed this out in a very succinct manner:

Perhaps the best testimonial for the Romney plan comes from its most recent critic. That would be Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, who on Tuesday told a congressional committee that his state wanted nothing to do with Massachusetts-style reforms. “We don’t want community rating. We don’t want extremely high mandatory standard benefits packages.”
Community rating, of course, is the practice of charging the same premium to different customers, even the diabetics and cancer survivors. “Extremely high mandatory standard benefits packages” in this particular case means insurance plans that cover what most of us would define as basic care, without gaps and loopholes that force the chronically and severely ill to pay exorbitant bills.
Insurance available to all. Benefits that include the services sick people need. Yeah, why would anybody want that?

Democrats really need to do a better job of focusing on these fundamentals. The whole idea of health reform is to make affordable insurance available to people the private markets have excluded. This idea is, in fact, demonstrably popular. When a Republican leader like Haley Barbour comes right out and says he prefers the status quo ante on health care even if it means no insurance or extremely costly insurance for basic coverage, he needs to be called on it early and often.

So the McClatchey newspapers and the web site The Iowa Republican held a focus group of conservative activists in the First In the Nation Caucus state and came away with some findings that won’t make headlines, but could greatly influence funders and other movers and shakers in national GOP politics. Its big conclusion: Palin and Romney are all but being written off already:

The group was unanimous, or near unanimous, on several topics. The most interesting conclusion is that most of them believe Sarah Palin is unelectable.
All but one of the focus group member felt Palin could not beat President Obama. That is a key factor in determining who they will support in the Iowa Caucus. The group concurred that Palin stepping down as Alaska’s governor midway through her term represents a major problem. Although Palin certainly had solid reasons for doing so, explaining that to voters will not be easy. The field appears it will be stacked with governors who finished more than one term, so Palin will have a difficult time matching her leadership abilities with theirs. Although most members of the focus group like Sarah Palin, they do not view her as “presidential”.
The attendees, including a diehard Mitt Romney supporter, also agreed that healthcare could doom Romney’s candidacy. He must come up with a credible explanation for his support and implementation of statewide healthcare mandates in Massachusetts. Romney has avoided talking about the issue so far. The group loathes Obamacare and feels Romney will have little chance of winning the GOP nomination unless he is able to capably distance himself from the similar plan he installed in Massachusetts. “Until he man’s up on healthcare, he moves way down the list,” said Ryan Frederick, 25, of Orient.

Beyond their less than positive views about Palin and Romney, this conservative focus group offered some additional thoughts on the 2012 field:

-Mike Huckabee will be the odds-on favorite to win the Iowa Caucus if he runs
-None of the likely 2012 candidates that did not run last time have made much headway. However, two members of the group have Mitch Daniels at or near the top of their list.
-Despite numerous visits to Iowa, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is not connecting with voters so far. Two of the attendees who have seen Pawlenty speak more than once feel he lacks the charisma necessary to win.
-Rick Santorum stands little chance of emerging victorious. “He is the Sam Brownback of the 2012 election,” said one attendee. “He will be everywhere, all over Iowa, visiting 300 times, and wind up having 12 people in Decatur County caucus for him.”

Ouchy, ouchy!
I’m drawing attention to this focus group because it appeared at a site most readers would probably never look at, and because it rather strikingly contrasts with the conventional wisdom that the folk who will have so much to say about the 2012 GOP presidential nomination are patiently waiting on the DC Establishment to present them with a savior like Haley Barbour or Chris Christie. Political activists in a place like Iowa view themselves as at least as sophisticated as the people who whisper to Politico every day, and more to the point, they are in a position to make their preferences matter.

Yesterday TNR’s Jonathan Chait took notice of a remarkable speech by Tim Pawlenty to a Tea Party Patriots conference, in which the probable presidential candidate indulged in some crowd-pleasing “rise up and take back our country” rhetoric. As Chait indicated, this sort of talk is too rarely analyzed for its underlying insurrectionary themes:

Why do I say this is inflammatory? Because conservatives are writing President Obama completely out of the American political tradition. Conservatives claim not only to have a superior vision for securing American prosperity, which is an understandable thing for a political movement to believe, but to represent the sole legitimate custodians of the Constitution. It follows from all this that Obama represents a unique threat to American freedom, and moreover — a point that is often made explicit — that the threat he poses requires a response that goes beyond normal politics. The whole metaphor of the Tea Party is to re-imagine conservatism as a proto-revolutionary guerrilla response to tyranny, rather than a movement that operates through normal political channels.

I couldn’t agree more. But what’s most remarkable to me about this incident is that it’s Tim Pawlenty stirring up the mob at the barricades. That this quintessentially bland and conventional pol is talking this way is an alarming indicator of the Republican zeitgeist. It’s like hearing someone drop an F-bomb on the Hallmark Channel–just not a good sign of civic health.

Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal articulates a reasonable-sounding but completely erroneous notion of the relationship between federal and state governments in a piece today glamorizing governors for wanting to turn down or turn back federal assistance:

For decades, the implicit deal between Washington and state capitals has been that the feds would offer chunks of cash, and in return would get commensurate influence over the states’ social policies. Now that flow of federal goodies has begun what figures to be a long-term decline, as the money Washington has available to pass around to the states is squeezed. Already the funds the federal government offered states as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package have nearly run out, and the budget-cutting that has begun in Washington is curtailing the other money available to dole out.
A loss of federal largess means a loss of influence in state capitals–particularly if states succeed in winning more autonomy in running the Medicaid health program for the poor, one area where money from Washington continues to grow.

Uh, no. In areas like health care the feds aren’t just handing out cash to “influence” what state governments do. Medicaid represents a collective decision that states will deal with the health care and (to a lesser extent) income maintenance needs of low-income families (plus some other categories of the needy like seniors seeking long-term care) with financial help from the federal government, just as the feds deal with the health care and income-maintenance needs of non-impoverished, non-disabled seniors through Medicare and Social Security.
Most recent federal administrations (including the current one) have exhibited great flexibility in allowing states to choose the precise means whereby the program’s goals are met. But that’s not the flexibiity some Republican governors want: they want the flexibility to reduce eligibility and coverage–i.e., to abandon some of the program’s goals.
And that’s not some sort of noble or interesting “experiment” conducted by “laboratories of democracy.” We already know how experimenting with letting the needy take care of themselves will turn out.

It’s likely that we are going to see a lot more Madison-like protest demonstrations at state capitols across the U.S. Regardless of the outcome in Wisconsin, it’s fortunate that Madison is taking the lead among state capitols and providing a template for future protests in other states. Few, if any state capitols, have a more creative and energetic progressive community to show the way.
In terms of protest optics, I would give the Madison demonstrators high marks for signage that covers every angle. It might be good, however, to have more signs propagating variations on the Walker = Polarizer meme. The latest PPP poll, which I flagged yesterday, indicates that union families are now much more disposed toward dumping Governor Walker next election (2014), but there has been very little change in his image among non-union respondents. Make Walker the new poster boy for divisive, polarizing politicians at every opportunity. Same for his egocentric refusal to compromise. Ever the ambitious narcissist, Walker looks in the mirror and sees himself as Reagan 2.0, not a reasonable conservative who is willing to compromise to secure the best outcome for his constituents — which should be highlighted by the protesters.
The Madison demonstrators are making effective use of the American flag, and could even display a few more in the crowds. There’s a reason MLK always marched under the American flag. He knew his adversaries would try to portray him as somehow un-American. And when the opportunity was presented, King would leverage expressions like “the sacred heritage of our nation” to support his protests. Unlike the right wing, Progressives are often reluctant to tap the power of patriotic symbols and verbal expressions. But America is now awash in a rancid wave of neo-McCarthyism, in which every progressive reform is slimed by right-wingers as “Socialism.” The flag conveys a resonant visual impression that “We’re doing this because we’re good Americans,” and the more flags in this particular situation, the better.
Some spokespersons for the Madison protests have raised concerns about Walker’s attack as a an assault on the first amendment. While the first amendment does not explicitly reference the right of unions to organize, it comes close enough, as some constitutional scholars believe. Here’s the entire text:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The 1st amendment card could be played more effectively with a little more message discipline among spokespersons. Call out Governor Walker for trying to undermine workers’ constitutional rights. Make him waste time and energy defending himself with trifling terminology arguments that most people won’t relate to. Look, for example, at the traction the NRA has gotten out of a broadly interpreted 2nd amendment, despite the fact that the founders were talking about flintlocks, not high-capacity ammo clips. Walker’s initiative to crush workers’ rights to union representation is un-American, and it should be plainly said.
MLK also used prayer creatively. In tense situations, surrounded by armed adversaries, King would sometimes call his marchers to drop down on one knee and say a prayer for justice and a peaceful outcome. A third generation preacher, King and his followers were sincere in appealing for God’s help. But he also understood the power of humility in winning support from fence-sitters and in neutralizing potential adversaries. Prayer serves protesters well.
Lastly, leaders and spokespersons for the protest should always make a point of appealing for reconciliation in public statements, as did King, so that Wisconsin citizens can live together in a new spirit of cooperation and goodwill, in stark contrast to the chaos created by Walker’s stoking the fires of anger and resentment. It’s all about sharing a more inspiring vision of hope and opportunity for all, an invitation to real community most citizens will support.

Jon Terbush has a post up at Talking Points Memo, “Poll: Wisconsin Voters Wouldn’t Elect Gov. Walker In Do-Over,” which makes for a good addendum to Nate Silver’s post on union voters, which I flagged earlier today. Here are the nut graphs:

Wisconsin voters already have buyers remorse about electing Gov. Scott Walker (R).
In a PPP poll released Monday, a majority of registered Wisconsin voters say that in a hypothetical re-do of last year’s gubernatorial election, they would vote for Democrat Tom Barrett, whom Walker defeated in November. That finding comes as Walker continues to stand firm on his budget proposals that would strip most state public employees of long-held collective bargaining rights.
Fifty-two percent of respondents said they would vote for Barrett if the election were held today, while 45% said they would vote for Walker. That’s almost exactly the opposite of what happened in the election, when Walker won the governorship with 52% of the vote to Barrett’s 47%.

Terbush notes that almost all of the shift is in union households, which now favor Barrett by a 31 point margin, compared to 14 points in the November election. He also cites a poll by conservative Dick Morris indicating 54 percent of Wisconsin respondents oppose Walker’s plan to gut collective bargaining for public employees.
Walker clearly believes time is on his side in the Wisconsin conflict. But, It’s possible that the longer the protest goes on, the more Walker looks like a tiresome polarizing figure, a meme which could eventually take root among non-union households. And the more he refuses to compromise, the more reasonable the protestors will appear to non-union voters. It’s still early in his term, but his re-election is already in doubt.

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
As Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker tries to strip away the collective bargaining rights of public-sector unions, many liberals have latched onto the idea that his real goal is to dismantle the labor movement and the infrastructure of the Democratic Party. That is almost certainly one of his aims, but it’s not the whole story.
Walker also has an economic vision for his state–one which is common currency in the Republican Party today, but hitherto alien in a historically progressive, unionist Midwestern state like Wisconsin. It is based on a theory of economic growth that is not only anti-statist but aggressively pro-corporate: relentlessly focused on breaking the backs of unions; slashing worker compensation and benefits; and subsidizing businesses in order to attract capital from elsewhere and avoid its flight to even more benighted locales. Students of economic development will recognize it as the “smokestack-chasing” model of growth adopted by desperate developing countries around the world, which have attempted to use their low costs and poor living conditions as leverage in the global economy. And students of American economic history will recognize it as the “Moonlight and Magnolias” model of development, which is native to the Deep South.
Just take a look at the broader policy context of the steps Walker is taking in Wisconsin. While simultaneously battling unions and calling for budget cuts, he’s made the state’s revenue quandary much worse by seeking to cut corporate taxes and boost “economic development incentives” (another term for tax subsidies and other public concessions) to businesses considering operations in Wisconsin. This is philosophically identical to the approach taken by new South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who hired a union-busting attorney to head up the state labor department and touted the state’s anti-union environment as a key to its prospects, explaining, “We’re going to fight the unions and I needed a partner to help me do it.” Despite large budget shortfalls, she’s also proposed to eliminate corporate income taxes and pay for it by restoring a sales tax on food. The common thread here is the quasi-religious belief that reducing business costs for corporations is the Holy Grail of economic development, while all other public and private goods should be measured strictly by their impact on the corporate bottom line.
Even before the arrival of Haley, this was the default model of economic growth in Southern states for decades–as the capital-starved, low-wage region concluded that the way it could compete economically with other states was to emphasize its comparative advantages: low costs, a large pool of relatively poor workers, “right to work” laws that discouraged unionization, and a small appetite for environmental or any other sort of regulation. So, like an eager Third-World country, the South sought to attract capital by touting and accentuating these attributes, rather than trying to build Silicon Valleys or seek broad-based improvements in the quality of life. Only during the last several decades, when Southern leaders like Arkansas’s Bill Clinton and North Carolina’s Jim Hunt called for economic strategies that revolved around improving public education and spawning home-grown industries was the hold of the “Moonlight and Magnolias” approach partially broken. And now it’s back with a vengeance, but no longer just in the South.
Members of the modern Republican Party, and the “Tea Party movement” in particular, gravitate naturally toward models of growth that treat public programs and investments as mere obstacles in the path of dynamic corporate “job creators.” Many look South in admiration: Just last week, Minnesota Tea Party heroine and possible presidential candidate Michele Bachmann visited South Carolina and told an audience that she was happy to join them in a “GOP paradise.” And Scott Walker is hardly alone among Midwestern Republican governors in pursuing an agenda that combines business-tax cuts and other incentives with attacks on public investments and Southern-style hostility to unions. That’s also the agenda of Ohio’s John Kasich, and while Michigan’s Rick Snyder and Indiana’s Mitch Daniels have stepped back from efforts to assault collective bargaining rights, they are devotees of the idea that low taxes and deregulation are essential to economic growth, regardless of the impact on public services and investments.
Why is this model of economic growth so appealing to the Tea Party? For one, it tends to jibe very well with the Ayn Randian belief in producerism: the idea that “job creators”–business owners–are the only source of economic growth in society, and that everyone else–the workers, government employees, and the poor–are just “useless eaters” shackling those who exercise individual initiative. While many Democrats are baffled by Scott Walker’s attack on the unions–shouldn’t he be focused on jobs rather than eliminating workers’ protections? they ask–the fact is that today’s conservatives believe this is the right and only way to create jobs. The same delusion is present at the federal level, where House Republicans insist that deregulation and spending cuts are the only ways to create jobs. That doesn’t sound like a formula for job growth, unless you account for the conviction that rolling back the public sector, and in the process impoverishing the middle-class families that depend on its services, is essential to keep any costs low enough for corporations to work their magic. The fact that the “beneficiaries” who get jobs as a result of this corporate development model will have to work for lower wages and fewer benefits, and suffer from poor schools and a violated environment, is beside the point.
The Tea Party’s love of “Moonlight and Magnolias” economics also fits with its disturbing affinity for other Old South concepts, which developed during Dixie’s long era of resistance to unionization, “big government” meddling with economic and social life, limits on natural resources exploitation, and judicial tampering with property rights and state’s rights. Most remarkable is the spread of “Tenther” interposition and nullification theories, which hold that the states should have special sovereign rights to thwart federal policies in ways not considered legitimate since the eras of Reconstruction and the civil rights movement. These have been widely touted by conservatives across the country (notably 2010 Senate candidates Sharron Angle of Nevada and Joe Miller of Alaska) and even by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (who has spoken warmly of the “Repeal Amendment” that would let states collectively kill federal laws).
The problem with this Southern theory of growth is that it won’t work: Economic development experts usually deride “Moonlight and Magnolias” approaches to job creation, noting that they track the outmoded first and second “waves” of basic economic development theory–which emphasized crude economic races to the bottom–as opposed to third and fourth “waves” that focus on worker skills, quality of life, public-private partnerships, innovation, and sustainability. If Wisconsin and other states–not to mention the country as a whole–end up adopting these atavistic economic ideals, they will simply begin to resemble the dysfunctional Old South societies that spawned them in the first place.
So what is at stake in Wisconsin, and across the country, is not just the pay and benefits of public employees, or their collective bargaining rights, or the specific programs facing the budgetary knife. We are contesting whether Americans who are not “job creators,” by virtue of wealth, should be considered anything more than cannon fodder in an endless war between states–and countries–over who can attract the most capital by slashing the most regulations. In this sense, standing up to Scott Walker is a truly worthy fight.

Ezra Klein has a short, but provocative Newsweek post “Do We Still Need Unions? Yes: Why they’re Worth Fighting For,” which opens up a long-overdue dialogue. I like Klein’s opening grabber, which presents the danger and opportunity:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s effort two weeks ago to end collective bargaining for public employees in his state was the worst thing to happen to the union movement in recent memory–until it unexpectedly became the best thing to happen to the union movement in recent memory. Give the man some credit: in seven days, Walker did what unions have been trying and failing to do for decades. He united the famously fractious movement, reknit its emotional connection with allies ranging from students to national Democratic leaders, and brought the decline of organized labor to the forefront of the national agenda. The question is: will it matter?

Klein goes on to limn some of the specific benefits of unions — higher wages, safety, addressing workplace grievances and the weekend. He could have added the 40-hour work week, overtime, workman’s comp, holidays, health insurance and pensions, to name a few others we take for granted — none of which would be a reality today for millions of workers without the leadership of organized labor. I’m sometimes amazed how many presumably intelligent people I meet who diss unions in a knee-jerk way seem unaware of this important history — apparently it’s not well-taught in public schools, nor even colleges nowadays.
Klein also notes the important socio-political benefits of unions in the U.S. — checking corporate economic domination, lobbying for working people instead of corporate profits, fighting for a broad range of legislative reforms that benefit even unorganized workers and serving as the largest source of support for progressive candidates. Any further weakening of unions would be disastrous for America in this regard.
As part of the Change to Win movement a few years ago, there was an ongoing discussion about the kinds of reforms needed to modernize trade unions and broaden their membership options, as critical to increasing labor’s numbers and strength. I was looking forward to this dialogue eventually bearing some fruit. But it seems instead to have withered on the vine. Hopefully the Wisconsin protests will encourage invigorating this discussion in a more pro-active direction.
There’s a chance Klein is right that Walker may have inadvertently done a good thing for unions, by rallying them and their supporters and awakening progressives to the reality that organized labor’s survival is at stake. The law of unintended consequences occasionally works for the good.
But the trade union movement’s weak public relations outreach is puzzling. In this age of streaming video, where is Labor’s television station, or even nation-wide radio programs? Where are the academy-award nominated documentaries about labor’s pivotal contributions to American society? How about some public service ads educating people about union contributions to social and economic progress in America?
It’s no longer enough have labor leaders do guest spots on news programs and talk shows. a much more aggressively pro-active p.r. and educational effort is needed. That commitment, coupled with an effort to modernize union recruitment and membership could help insure that union-busting politicians like Walker don’t get the chance to do their worst.