rssPolice officers, firefighters rethinking loyalty to GOP amid union crackdowns
Friday, April 01, 2011 at 11:03 am
- 6 Comments
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s crackdown on public union rights is now rippling through conservative strongholds in the state. Politico reports that distaste for Walker’s treatment of public employees and anger over the threat of lost benefits have led many firefighters and police officers in the state to reconsider their loyalty to the Republican Party.
Democrats could once count on the support of labor unions across the country, but a Republican emphasis on social conservatism in the second half of the last century sent millions of middle and working class union members across party lines. Amid recent evidence that social issues are not a top priority for the vast majority of American conservatives, pro-union voters are now flocking to the party that they feel better represents their economic interests.
Politico reports consternation among public safety union members in Wisconsin and beyond:
[W]hen Walker ordered the Capitol police to arrest Wisconsin demonstrators who refused to obey a curfew, they refused – and instead hundreds of them lined up with the demonstrators to show solidarity.
“We know what’s right from wrong,” one officer shouted into a bullhorn in the packed Capitol building. “We will not be kicking anyone out. In fact, we will be sleeping here with you!”
In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich and his Republican allies decided against giving police and firemen special treatment, opting instead to try to appeal to their conservative instincts and win them over to the cause.
Since then, Mark Sanders, president of the Ohio Association of Professional Fire Fighters, said he’s had Republican members “apologize” for backing Kasich. “They are never voting that way again,” said Sanders, a Cincinnati fire department lieutenant.
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) experienced the blowback firsthand when he attended a recent event for rising leaders in the New York fire department.
“These are down-the-line conservatives. They fully supported Bush in the Iraq war, in the war against terrorism, and on all the gut issues they were there,” King said. “Some of the guys I talked to said, ‘We stood with Bush on Queens Boulevard. Now, the Republicans have turned on us.’ ”
While the evidence that Politico’s Jeanne Cummings cites regarding party switches among police and firefighters is largely anecdotal, there is at least some hard data suggesting that economic concerns are driving a sea change among independent and right-leaning voters. Cummings reports that a Hart Research poll found that in November, 47 percent of American building trade union members identified as Democrats and 25 percent said they were Republicans. By January, before the Wisconsin collective bargaining meltdown had even begun, “the percentage of trade union members who called themselves Democrats jumped to 63 percent while the self-described Republicans fell to 18 percent.”
Similarly, this isn’t the first evidence of discontent with Republican politicians within the law enforcement community. The Wisconsin Law Enforcement Association (WLEA), a union of state and local officers focused on collective bargaining, voiced opposition to Walker’s insistence that they arrest and perform crowd control on protesters back in February. A WLEA representative contacted by The American Independent at the time said he couldn’t comment on disputes with the governor’s office but stated that the union’s lobbyist was at work at the Capitol.
6 Comments
Comment posted April 1, 2011 @ 6:58 pm
Must be tough when the desire to feed one’s basest instincts butts up against the ability to feed one’s family.
Comment posted April 1, 2011 @ 7:01 pm
This is very sensible. The Americans who are workers no longer have anything in common with those Americans who identify with the narrow but enormously costly interests of those politicians who are Corporate stooges. We are all united in our desire to work to rebuild America, but we would like to be paid a fair wage. I believe Americans will no longer be friendly to corporations like GE, who got paid 3.2 Billion dollars to not pay taxes while funding politicians who are trying to remove all the income of those Americans who actually produce. If the next election is honest, the Republican party may get a significant wake-up call. The question is whether the Oligarchy will allow free elections.
Comment posted April 1, 2011 @ 8:10 pm
The unfortunate thing is that the Democratic party does not represent the interests of working people either. They are representatives for the moneyed classes every bit as much as the Republican party. They do it with more crumbs thrown to those who live beneath the table. They pay more attention to the aesthetics of oppression than their classmates in the Republican party.
Real freedom is power over the big issues not just the trivial ones. Most people are content with wage slavery and lottery illusions. Someday they will make it big. So long as the addictive responses to alienation are cheap enough for the masses our masters are content… the serfs will not rise up.
Settling for serfdom is not the answer. Until significant numbers of people realize the nature of the big picture most will continue to blame their fellow victims for the multitude of evils that beset us.
I am increasingly becoming convinced that the Marxists have it right. Until “Labor” receives the FULL value of its work and until “Owners” pay the FULL cost of doing business we are engaged in fighting over the placement of the deck chairs while the Titanic slowly sinks. The fools that run the ship think that their private life boats will save them.
I used to be skeptical of this analysis but find few paradigms which so clearly explain what I see around me. Of course we are mostly exposed and propagandized with the most egregious examples of socialist governments while the enormous benefits of socialism in various locations are dismissed, demeaned or ignored. And I don’t want a “government” telling me what to do either… but if I thought there was some kind of equity and genuine representation of my real interests I could tolerate submission to select authority.
Comment posted April 1, 2011 @ 8:30 pm
Back in the late 80s, when Poppy Bush was President, I sensed a growing trend of elitism tending towards creating an American aristocracy. When Jeb Bush first ran for governor in Florida in 1994, he came across as “entitled” to be governor because his daddy had been POTUS. Dubya had the same attitude and the Florida election debacle took us further towards the banana republic status. Talk about entitlement mentality! The wealthy feel entitled to being an aristocracy, which is un-American, pure Ayn Rand, and is destroying us little bit by little bit. It’s weird how some people of a particular sub-party vote for the very thing they are supposedly against by believing lies about the other side.
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