Krugman on Wisconsin and the Republican Overreach

Here is a short post by Paul Krugman on his NY Times blog:

The Mandate Thing

A quick note on polling and voting: as more and more polls come out showing that the public does not, in fact, hate public workers and their unions, there’s been a stock answer — namely, that the real poll took place in November, so who cares what a thousand or so people say now.

Aside from the fact that this reveals a complete failure to understand the statistics of polling, what it really gets wrong is what the election represented. Voters were not, in fact, asked to vote on what Republican governors like Scott Walker are now trying to do; in a real sense what we’re seeing is a case of bait and switch.

And here again, I find myself flashing back to the Bush years. In 2004 Bush won a national election by posing as America’s defender against gay married terrorists; as soon as the election was done, he declared that this gave him a mandate to … privatize Social Security. Not so much, it turned out.

Of course none of this will stop Walker nor the Republicans. They are hired gunslingers for the ultra-rich like governor Walker's buddy David Koch. The hired hands don't quit until their bosses tell them to.