KURSK IN WISCONSIN

The passage of Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill in Wisconsin was like Stalingrad for public employee unions, I wrote in Unions on the Ropes (April, 2011).

Stalingrad was the Nazis’ first major defeat (the five month-long battle ended in early February 1943, with two million casualties on both sides).  But it was still possible for Germany to win the war.  Hitler thought he could regain the initiative with a carefully planned offensive to pinch off a bulge in the Russian lines at Kursk (between Stalingrad on the Volga and Moscow in western Russia).

But the Nazis were defeated. They lost the cream of their panzers, which they could not replace.  After Kursk (July-August 1943), it was impossible for Germany to win.

On Tuesday (8/09) in Wisconsin, public employee unions suffered their Kursk.

First, a recap.  The unions pulled out all the stops to defeat the budget repair bill.  Democrat state senators fled the state to delay a vote.  A mob occupied the state capitol.  Death threats were made against GOP lawmakers.

Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi issued an injunction to keep the budget repair bill from being implemented.  Her legal grounds were specious, so unions spent millions trying to put on the state supreme court a liberal who would ignore statutes and precedents.  They failed.

Unions no longer could prevent the bill from going into effect.  But they thought they could so punish Wisconsin Republicans lawmakers in other states would be too frightened to pass similar measures.

They forced recall elections against six state senators.  If Democrats won three, they would take control of the state senate.  (The November 2010 elections had given the GOP a 19-14 majority.)

Barack Obama carried all six targeted districts in 2008.  Democrats and unions outspent Republicans, 2-1 ($20 million vs. $10 million:  check out this left-wing money matrix).

Their head start in organizing should have given unions an edge, because turnout usually is low in special elections.  It didn’t.  Democrats took only two seats.

One win was in a district in which Mr. Obama received 60.8 percent of the vote.  In the other, the GOP incumbent had moved out of the district to move in with his mistress.  His estranged wife supported the recall.  But he still got 49 percent of the vote.

Overall, Republicans received 53 percent of the vote, slightly more than Gov. Walker got in last year’s Republican landslide.

Democrats strained to see a silver lining.

"I feel strangely energized and elated," said blogger Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos).  "We took the fight into red territory, and took two seats."

"I can’t imagine that if I were a state legislator in another state that I would want to go through what these six Republicans just went through," said AFL-CIO political director Mike Podhorzer.

Behind the brave faces, reality was sinking in.  "This was about as hard as we could possibly fight, and it still wasn’t enough," said Daily Kos campaign director Chris Bowers.

The unions say they’ll go forward with a plan to recall Gov. Walker even though the results Tuesday indicate they’ll fail.  The unions fight on because they know they’re doomed if what happened in Wisconsin spreads.

What unions objected to most in the budget repair bill was a provision limiting collective bargaining to wages only.  Many saw this as union busting.  Gov. Walker was likened to Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini.

The restrictions were necessary, Gov. Walker said, because union featherbedding threatened to bankrupt school districts.  Particularly egregious was a requirement districts buy health insurance from a firm controlled by the teachers’ union.

Thuggish tactics have cost unions some support.  More is being lost because "as the abstract debate over collective bargaining collides with reality, it’s becoming clear just how big a lie the Big Labor line was," wrote John McCormack in the Weekly Standard.  "Now that the law is in effect, where are the horror stories of massive layoffs and schools shutting down?

In fact, the budget repair bill has saved several school districts from bankruptcy, and prevented teacher layoffs in many more.

"It turns out the sky isn’t going to fall on local governments in Wisconsin," acknowledged the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which opposed the collective bargaining restrictions.

Despite this, Democrats think they could oust Gov. Walker if former Sen. Russ Feingold runs against him.

Scott Walker has balanced a budget that was $3.6 billion in the red without raising taxes.  He’s kept school districts solvent and prevented teacher layoffs.  Half of all private sector jobs created in June were created in Wisconsin.

Sen. Feingold would be running to overturn that.  I don’t think much of his chances.  Anymore than the Germans had a chance after Kursk.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.