Walker Continues His False, Self-Serving Narrative

At the National Governor's Association meeting in Salt Lake City, our Governor just keeps on talking and making things up.

About the political uproar of his making, his choosing, that engulfed the state and could limit his term in office to just over a year - - Scott Walker continues to say he made a tactical error, but not conceding that he made an error in judgment or a substantive miscalculation.

"The mistake I made early on is, I looked at it almost like the head of a small business: identify a problem, identify a solution and go out and do it," Walker told Reuters at the National Governor's Association meeting in Salt Lake City.

"I don't think we built enough of a political case, so we let ... the national organizations come in and define the debate while we were busy just getting the job done," he said.

This is simply not what happened.

Walker deliberately kept his plan secret to strip collective bargaining rights from workers who had won them a half-century earlier, then "dropped the bomb" - - his word - - on all public employees right down to the town and village level, except his chosen police and firefighter favorites, and refused to negotiate with state employees who agreed to accept all his economic demands.

"The mistake I made early on is, I looked at it almost like the head of a small business: identify a problem, identify a solution and go out and do it."

What kind of a small business refuses to negotiate with, and drops a bomb on, its employees?

And by the way, Walker is not and has never been a small business owner. He's been a state legislator, county executive and Governor.

Note also that Walker turns some of the recall reality upside down, as Alberta Darling, the recalled Republican, enjoys a big advantage over challenger Sandy Pasch:

"If the Republican candidates are outspent two to one, it's pretty difficult," Walker said of the recall effort.

Finally, Walker is playing an old card from the '60's.

"I don't think we built enough of a political case, so we let ... the national organizations come in and define the debate while we were busy just getting the job done," he said.

Blame the out-of-state agitators. It's ignorant and misleading, and fails to take note of the tens of thousands of Wisconsinites who went to Madison repeatedly to begin to take back their government.

This is not the first time Walker has tried to redefine what has happened and what he did.

Walker tried recently during a visit to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board explain his way out of the mess he has created, and it was as transparently false then as it is now.

Fresh in office, Walker decided to crush unions, not to work with them, and it has nothing to do with thinking like a small business owner, or being a problem solver. That's self-serving, talking-point-driven spin. And it was problem-creating, not problem-solving.

What Walker should do is own up to the truth:

He's a narrowly-defined career pol who was interested in exercising his new-found political power against unions to please corporate donors who put him over the top, having also built up eight years of pent-up resentments as Milwaukee County Executive, where unions had considerable sway.

His political one-dimensionality explains his methods and goals - - and the pickle he finds himself in now - - reaping the whirlwind, seeing his poll numbers crash, losing credibility by the day and facing certain recall, just as his toxic politicking put six of his Senate allies on recall ballots.