Hear the audio version here (segments older than 3 weeks may be unavailable)

We're going to have to get our friend of the show Brian Sikma - who is up in Wisconsin fighting the conservative fight in the northern parts of the country - back on the program to talk about this one.  Have you seen what the conservatives are doing up there to combat this statewide union temper tantrum being thrown against Governor Scott Walker?

Just as a refresher, Walker took office with all kinds of budget shortfalls.  Just like every state that is led for too long by liberals, Wisconsin was heading towards bankruptcy real fast.  And one of the major reasons is because of the lavish benefits packages that had been doled out to public government workers by Democrat politicians.  Remember, the money that they promise these public sector unions isn't theirs to begin with.  That's the problem with public sector bargaining.

Collective bargaining is usually done with the union representing the workers bargaining with the management who controls the company's money.  But the money being bargained over in a public sector job is not the "managements' money," it's the people's money.  These Democrats who are sitting at the bargaining table across from the unions aren't having to hand money out of their pocket to the other side.  In fact, they know that if they give the other side enough, that other side will write some big checks back to them in the form of campaign contributions.  So if there's incentive at all for these Democrats, it's to hand out more and more of the taxpayers' money.  That means more thanks coming from the unions in the form of contributions.  And that's exactly what had gone on for a long time in Wisconsin.

So Walker comes in and tries to right the ship.  He says the first thing we've got to do is roll back some of these lavish benefits that are coming at taxpayer expense.  Teachers and other government union workers can start paying a little bit of their own health insurance.  They can start paying a little bit into their own retirement.  And the public sector unions flip out.  They started railing about how he was an enemy to the working man.  Um, the working man includes the private business sector guys who are paying heavy taxes to support these unearned benefits, thank you very much.

But no one likes to have their free Cadillac taken away from them when it's time to pay the piper.  So they revolted.  And Wisconsin has very lax recall laws.  So they went after the Republican legislators who passed the law.  And they didn't get enough of them.  So now they are going after Walker.  And they gathered enough signatures to force a recall election.  Next up for them is to figure out who they're going to get to go against Walker.  But the pro-Walker folks have decided to use the Wisconsin system to their own advantage this time:

Supporters of Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker are attempting to spoil the recall effort against him with a campaign to get voters to write the governor?s name in as a candidate in the state's Democratic primary to seek an opponent for him.

 

...

 

According to the Menomonee Falls Patch, the write-in effort started as a conversation on Facebook, but in little more than a week the page "Operation: Write in Scott Walker in Democrat primary" garnered more than 900 "likes."

 

"If we can gain a majority of the votes in the [D]emocratic primary we will have defeated the [D]emocrats at their game and save [sic] the tax payers millions of dollars," the page states. In addition to Wisconsin-related news, recent postings on the page include anti-Obama and anti-Nancy Pelosi links.

 

Such a write-in effort is possible under Wisconsin's open primary system, which allows voters to vote in a party's primary even if they do not share its political affiliation.

 

Still, it's not clear what would happen in the general recall election if the effort were successful, the Patch reported, and the Government Accountability Board ? the body overseeing the recall effort ? would not speculate.

Now, 900 likes is far from a statewide movement.  But the story goes on to say that there are a lot of people talking about it.  And if a statewide write in effort can work for Lisa Murkowski (with a tough name like that) in Alaska, surely a party-wide effort can work in Wisconsin.  What I can't wait to hear is for all of the liberals to start whining about how that's not what the system is supposed to be used for and that this is abuse of the system.  What is it they say regarding "turnabout?"