Conservatives Just Hate Democracy – Another Diatribe by a Conservative Against Having an Election

And How Public Employee Unions are Undemocratic (Mainly Because They Don’t Support Conservatives)

In what seems like an unending number of Conservatives who now grace the editorial and opinion pages of the Washington Post we now have someone named Charles Lane who creates an entirely bogus argument involving the recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.  Mr. Lane, who is identified as an “editorial writer” for the Post tries to argue how having a recall election is an anti-democratic process.

For public-sector unions, the Walker recall is no mere exercise in payback. The unions, upon which Democrats depend heavily for funding and foot soldiers, say Walker must be ousted and his reforms reversed for the sake of the middle class. Progressive values — even democracy itself — are in mortal danger.

Wow, even “democracy itself” is in mortal danger if there is going to be this horrible thing called an election.  And here everyone thought that democracy was defined as having  free elections.  Boy, I guess all of us were wrong on that.

Even worse, public employee unions are the threat to a progressive goal such as majority rule.

Actually, the opposite is true. The threat to such progressive goals as majority rule, transparent government, a vibrant public sector and equality comes from public-sector unionism.

Mr. Lane’s complaint is that having been elected Governor, Mr. Walker is not free to do whatever he wants regardless of the opinion of the electorate.  Of course that is not democracy, it is totalitarianism.  And the state of Wisconsin put in safeguards to prevent just this sort of thing.  It is not easy, it is almost never, ever done but the state of Wisconsin allows for a recall election if a large number of voters ask for one.  And that is exactly what has happened.

But for Conservatives this is not democracy, having an election is not something they ever want when they are the issue.  And if anyone doubts the hypocrisy of Conservatives, consider the case of California.  There Conservatives led the fight to recall former Gov. Gray Davis, which they did and replaced him with Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Although he has not revisited all of the commentary on that recall, The Dismal Political Economist does not recall (pun intended) any Conservative outrage against the recall in California.

And Conservatives in California go even further in their anti-democratic positions.  When the currently elected Governor wanted to put a tax increase on the ballot, Conservatives blocked the move.  It was not enough that they were against tax increases, they were against letting the public vote on the tax increase.  Somehow people like Mr. Lane do not see this as “anti-democracy”.

So for at least one Conservative, a successful recall would mean the end of democracy

Or maybe it’s dawning on Wisconsinites — even some who don’t like Walker’s policies — that it would be a disaster to cut his term in half at the behest of a special interest group. That would confirm Wisconsin’s public-sector unions as the state’s de facto rulers, which really would be the end of democracy.

which brings us to their definition of democracy, which is that democracy is where voters elect Conservative candidates.  Anything else is anti-democratic.