A left-wing ‘temper tantrum’ to short-circuit elections and their consequences
Three years ago, the combination of a $787 billion stimulus and multibillion-dollar bailouts sparked the first tea party rallies. The tea partyers protested, yes, but most importantly they pledged to “remember in November” — that is, November of the following year, when the next congressional elections would be held.
Liberals, confident the tea parties would fail, called it a “temper tantrum.” That “tantrum” wound up sweeping many a Democrat out of office. Now, liberals are throwing a fit of their own. But they aren’t waiting for the next elections. They want their way, now.
That’s the upshot of both the threatened boycotts of a conservative legislative group’s corporate sponsors and the attempted recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The left, having lost last time, is too impatient to bide its time.
The conservative group in question, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), has been around since 1973. It has been quite active in Georgia since Republicans took the reins here a decade ago.
By ALEC’s count, each year one in five bills based on the group’s model texts becomes law. That rate hardly signals a rampant rubber-stamping of laws written in secret and railroaded through statehouses.
The two ALEC-approved laws at the heart of the boycott threats are one requiring voters to provide photo identification and the “stand your ground” self-defense law that gained national notoriety after the shooting death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.
But states began passing voter ID laws nearly a decade ago. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 upheld Indiana’s version, one of the strictest, noting plaintiffs presented no one denied the vote because of the law. “Stand your ground,” meanwhile, is a century-old legal concept long approved by courts. In recent years, it has been codified by a number of states — including eight with Democratic governors at the time.
Now, suddenly, these court-approved laws have made ALEC public enemy No. 1. Companies that donated to it are shrinking in the face of boycott threats. What changed? Why now?
Permit a theory: The urgency stems from the conservative wave that swept over numerous statehouses in 2010. Republicans now control 26 statehouses and 29 governor’s mansions. That’s a stark change from before the 2010 elections, which produced the largest loss of statehouse seats for one party in decades and the most GOP state legislators in 82 years. Suddenly, ALEC has a lot more influence. And the left doesn’t want to wait for the next elections — and to have to win a reversal at the polls — to stop it.
In Wisconsin, labor unions aghast at the changes Walker and GOP legislators enacted — including limiting collective bargaining rights for some public workers and requiring them to contribute more toward their health care and pensions — will try to recall him in an election next month.
Never mind that Walker campaigned on most of these changes, won the election and followed through. The unions want to remove him from office more than two years early. There’s talk Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder could face a recall as well due to his union-limiting law.
Fledgling democracies mark a significant milestone when they transfer power safely from one group to another. We haven’t fallen that far.
But it is disturbing to see some groups try to lessen the effect of their electoral losses by making threats and seeking to remove officers carrying out an electoral mandate. They tread on dangerous ground.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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327 comments Add your comment
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 23rd, 2012
8:38 am
“It is morally reprehensible to attempt to change the “rules of the game” for those who have planned their lives, from their early years, based on retirement pensions into their old age, and who are now old in years.”
It is even morally reprehensible to hold up taxpayers for sweetheart deals while threatening strikes on jobs that contain no safety issues where the workers gets at least 2 months off per year.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 23rd, 2012
8:40 am
“Do we want to create an America in which the public sector is made more like the private sector, with its survival-of-the-fittest mentality”
Absolutely!
If you aren’t worried about someone else doing your job better, you don’t do as good of a job.
ragnar danneskjold
April 23rd, 2012
8:49 am
Stolen joke: What would you call it if Barack Obama put his dog in a carrier on the roof of his car? Meals on wheels!
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 23rd, 2012
8:51 am
“Recalls are part of the legal process which include elections so what you’re complaining about is specious and has no validity.”
Oh, so if something is legal we no longer have the right to complain about it, Sandy? Is that the best you’ve got? Fine. The Citizen’s United campaign contribution issue is now legal, so you libs no longer get to complain about corporations giving big money to SuperPACS, OK? See how that works, Sandy?
The complaint is about the irony of liberals calling the tea party a “temper tantrum” – standing up and speaking out and voting for their beliefs – while the left has their own version of a “temper tantrum”, but as usual doubling-down on it by using special recall elections which cost taxpayers even more money because they can’t wait for a normal election cycle to get what they want.
And let’s not even go there with the loony “Occupy” protestors who caused millions of taxpayer dollars to be wasted across the country.
See, both groups do things “legally” regarding elections, Sandy. It’s just that one group (the Tea Party) waits and does their voting when it won’t cost taxpayers one additional dime, while the other group (liberals) doesn’t give a damn about taxpayers and forces expensive special elections.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 23rd, 2012
8:52 am
ragnar @ 8:49:
Real Athens
April 23rd, 2012
8:59 am
“Everything I’ve read points to improvements within Louisiana’s schools.
Here’s one of many:
Louisiana’s high-school graduation rate improving faster
Good for the students.”
Have you been to Louisiana lately? Again, an opinion piece, written by a right-wing think tank, defending an ALEC designed dismantling of a public school system in a state that lost 29% of the population it’s biggest city — that has yet to return.
I read that article and it is pure, statistical, mish-mash.
Yep, objectivity. Sigh.
Real Athens
April 23rd, 2012
9:01 am
Tibby@8:51
My daddy can whip your daddy.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 23rd, 2012
9:19 am
What a GREAT freakin’ video!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ-4gnNz0vc&feature=player_embedded
Mary Elizabeth
April 23rd, 2012
9:22 am
“If you aren’t worried about someone else doing your job better, you don’t do as good of a job.”
==========================================
Please, speak only for yourself, Tiberius. I will take you at your word that motivation, by fear, is probably true for you. However, it is not true for myself and for many others. Some people are more motivated by their own internal expectations, and internal rewards, to be the best that they can possibly be at what they do. That way of achieving is motivated by fulfilling one’s own potential and by striving for excellence for itself, alone. Excellent teachers urge each of their students to reach his or her full potential, quite aside from another student’s potential, which will vary. Excellent teachers make certain that all of their students achieve to the best of their individual abilities, within a collaborative and nurturing environment.
Ours are simply two differing ways of looking at, and of approaching, life.
Oblama
April 23rd, 2012
9:24 am
And Cynthia McKinney is running AGAIN. She is from the Rev. Runt racist left. Her elevator doesn’t go to the bottom.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 23rd, 2012
9:29 am
Sorry, Mary Elizabeth, but all the pie-eyed, Skittles and unicorn rantings you post do not reverse basic human behavior.
For every one person you can trot out who does a great job simply because they love to, I’ll trot out 1000 who do so for that reason AND because they want to make sure they’re irreplaceable to their employer so that the next guy won’t get their job.
Your fantasy world does not trump reality, Mary Elizabeth.
Oblama
April 23rd, 2012
9:32 am
This election is about the economy, jobs and the alarming Fed debt and how to reduce it. Oblama wants to make it about class warfare/ race warfare/ sex warfare/ age warfare. Oblama is the “Great Divider. Only the Dems can call a spending increase a cut. Time for Term Limits in Congress to rid the sewer of the rats.
tiredofIT
April 23rd, 2012
9:33 am
“motivation, by fear”, those that are religious know this all to well. Too bad more people don’t hold them self’s to a higher standard. Of course, this requires a real work ethic and personal responsibility, that is seems, a lot of Americans don’t have or choose not too.
Oblama
April 23rd, 2012
9:34 am
Our first “Reality T.V. President”….. Barrack Hussein Oblama.
Oblama
April 23rd, 2012
9:39 am
Abortion is blatant age discrimination by the left against the soon born and defenseless. Killing a human being simply for convenience is immoral and cowardice. The left has no heart.
Mary Elizabeth
April 23rd, 2012
9:51 am
Tiberius, 9:29 am
You forfeit the dialogue, regarding two differing ways of approaching life, when you must resort to insulting and name calling. Do you think that indulging in those tactics might, possibly, be related to your overall worldview? Food for thought for you and others. Best regards to you.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 23rd, 2012
10:04 am
You forfeit the dialogue, Mary Elizabeth, when you refuse to face reality.
If you cannot acknowledge that which is all around you, simply because you disagree with it, not only are you incapable of commenting on it, you are incapable of doing anything to change it.
Mary Elizabeth
April 23rd, 2012
10:15 am
But, I do acknowledge two different worldviews, Tiberius. Mine simply is different from yours. “Reality” like “beauty,” is “in the eye of the beholder.” Have a good day.
moonbat betty
April 23rd, 2012
10:22 am
Tiberius, I was banned from Bookman’s on Saturday just for acknowedging I Report’s presence and posting a tribute song!
good grief, I guess they are trying to build a liberal utopia over there.
Rafe Hollister
April 23rd, 2012
10:23 am
Funny, that the liberals are all for experimenting with the best medical delivery system in the world, but have a conniption, if someone mentions experimenting with one of the worst public education systems in the developed world.
moonbat betty
April 23rd, 2012
10:24 am
ha ha – “acknowledging” for the for the spelling gestapo.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 23rd, 2012
10:27 am
Mary Elizabeth, thinking you can change basic human nature is about as worthwhile an effort as when a woman enters into a relationship with a man with hopes to “change” the few things she doesn’t like about him.
Nothing good ever comes about from that exercise.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
April 23rd, 2012
10:31 am
moonbat betty, you’re another in a long line of bloggers freed from the Bookman gulag.
It proves everyday that he has no standards for banning people (except for those who embarrass him when they catch him in his nonsense).
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 23rd, 2012
10:32 am
do we want to create an America in which the private sector is urged to incorporate many of the service values of the public sector
———-
If the objective is to go bankrupt more quickly, then yes, that would be the way to go.
Libtards have turned that old prime directive of NASA–”failure is not an option”–on it’s head. For libtards, failure is the goal. Without failure, their dream of fundamentally transforming America can’t happen.
Dusty
April 23rd, 2012
10:38 am
Well, I’m sure Kyle will be here soon with a new subject. But reading the posts on this last idea is enough to give one a personal “temper tantrum”..
For instance, how in the world do liberals expect us to cut the huge American debt without cutting expenses and everything else that costs us money? No matter what efforts are made, liberal Democrats are hollering and screaming about someone “stealing their money”.
A few strong governors realize the financial situation of our country and its states and are trying to make reasonable financial cuts to keep their domains able to stay within their budgets. So they are demonized by Demoracts who fight them every step of the way. Unions seem to have no other thoughts but their own survival. The country as a whole does not figure to them.
Are Democrats totally unconcscious? Not all of them I’m sure. But then comes Mary Elizabeth, crying and moaning like teachers are Joan of Arc and bad people are burning their pensions at the stake. Most teachers are dedicated as are most professionals, but they are no saints as the teachers of APB have shown us.
Would Democrats please step forward and show us that you CARE and that our president is not simply running around the country (Ft. Stewart today) trying to raise election funds instead of any worry about the funds of the USA and its stability?
What a crock! That’s my spiel for a while. I’m busy today.
md
April 23rd, 2012
10:52 am
Mary……you must have forgotten that the dog eat dog private sector has to make money to support itself and that public sector……….
Hellooo…….
Lil' Barry Bailout (Revised Downward)
April 23rd, 2012
12:06 pm
Excellent point, md. The private sector pays ALL the bills in this country. The government sector, aka the “takers”, merely decide how much they’re going to get in the way.