How Far Down Has Walker Dragged Wisconsin's Good Name?

A Republican State Senator from Rapid City, in western South Dakota, introduced a bill banning collective bargaining for public employees.

But when it got widely-criticized, and even labeled by one leading Republican "a Wisconsin-type solution for a problem that we don't have," the GOP state senator came to his senses and withdrew it.

Remember, South Dakota is already a weak-union, so-called "Right-to-Work" state, and western South Dakota is the more conservative part of a conservative state with a really, really conservative, GOP-led legislature.

And you can't sell Walker's approach there?

After all, the South Dakota legislature has approved a resolution urging public school teachers to throw cold water on the science of climate change: the Assembly version of the resolution said, in part, that "global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact" and added that "climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics" [my emphasis added] could be responsible. 

How conservative is the environment in the South Dakota legislature? One member even introduced a bill - - not approved - - that would have required all South Dakotans over 21 to own a gun.

Yet even in in the South Dakota Capitol, Scott Walker's dropped-the-bomb on-workers-'style' (see transcript) had little appeal.

So from apparently an even more conservative Wisconsin - - South Dakota, we salute you.