The Walker Test

Yup.

The next Republican candidate for president will have to pass the “Walker Test.”

Walker’s reforms changed the balance of power, the correlation of forces between taxpayers and statists in Wisconsin: a traditionally blue/left-of-center state. Walker showed those reforms could survive a counterattack by every union in the nation focused like a laser on crushing liberty in one state before it could spread.

Walker won his election in 2010.  The Left tried to defeat him by winning a Supreme Court race that could have undone his reforms. They failed.  The left tried to recall Walker himself—and failed.  In 2012, Walker and his Republican majorities in the Wisconsin House and Senate remain in power.  Stronger than ever.  Tested by fire.

■Walker did it first.
■Walker did it in a blue state.
■Walker defended his progress in three elections.
■Walker kept his legislative majorities intact.
■Walker’s model is scalable.  His reform can be implemented in all of the 24 other states with Republican governors and a Republican legislature.  He has a raised a standard that all Republicans can follow to success.

He has left no excuses for other Republicans who would offer themselves for state or national leadership.

Do Something?

James Wigderson penned a good column about the completely natural, if utterly irrational, push to “do something” after something like the Connecticut killings. He concludes.

None of these bans would have had any effect on the Connecticut school shooting. They would not have prevented the attack on the Sikh temple earlier this year. They would not have prevented the shooting at the Azana Salon & Spa in Brookfield. The proposed gun control measures would not have prevented any mass shootings, any more than declaring the schools in Connecticut gun-free zones. The worst school massacre in American history was in Bath Township, Michigan in 1927. The killer used bombs, not guns. Timothy McVeigh used a fertilizer bomb in Oklahoma to kill 168 people. The same day as the school shooting in Connecticut, a man stabbed 23 children at a school in China.

We’re a can-do society, and we believe there’s a solution to every problem. But the problem is that there are evil people in this world intent on doing evil things. “Doing something” that is completely ineffective only gives a false sense of security, and we should expect our leaders to know better.

Boehner Resists Rush to Legislation

Good.

WASHINGTON—House Speaker John A. Boehner rejected calls from Democrats to schedule a vote on new gun restrictions before the end of the year, saying he wants to wait for recommendations from a newly formed White House task force before committing to a legislative response to the mass shooting at a Connecticut school.

“When the vice president’s recommendations come forward, we’ll certainly take them into consideration,’’ Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday in his first public comments on calls for new gun legislation since the slaying of 20 students and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. “But at this point I think our hearts and souls ought to be to think about those victims in this horrible tragedy.”

It’s a bit ridiculous to expect him to a vote on legislation that hasn’t even been written yet.