Oceania has Never Been at War with Wisconsin

The New York Times claims:

officials and union leaders said, reports of the involvement of the Democratic National Committee — specifically Organizing for America, the grass-roots network born of Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign — were overblown to start with…

… “This is a Wisconsin story, not a Washington one,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “False claims of White House involvement are attempts to distract from the organic grass-roots opposition that is happening in Wisconsin.”

Doug Ross responds:

These are outright fabrications. In fact Brad Woodhouse, the Democratic Party Communications Director, was spotted crowing about Obama’s involvement as recently as Thursday.

And Obama’s political wing — an extension of the SEIU, it would appear — is still hawking the protests. According to Politico‘s Ben Smith, it has published at least 54 tweets promoting the rallies.

So why the sudden attempt by the administration and the MSM to remove the White House’s fingerprints? Perhaps they’ve read the polls:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters agree more with the Republican governor in his dispute with union workers. Thirty-eight percent (38%) agree more with the unionized public employees, while 14% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

In an effort to close the state’s sizable budget deficit, Walker is proposing to eliminate collective bargaining for public employees including teachers on everything but wage issues. He is excluding public safety workers such as policemen and firemen from his plan.

Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters think teachers, firemen and policemen should be allowed to go on strike, but 49% disagree and believe they should not have that right. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.

Or seen the horrible optics. But why the intense push in the first place? As VDH wrote yesterday, on one level, it’s simply because “That’s What Community Organizers Do:”

President Obama need not worry about budget deficits in the manner of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Unlike state officials, he can print money, and raise fees and taxes. The nation’s more affluent, unlike blue-state refugees seeking red-state low tax sanctuaries, cannot flee anywhere. That makes it easy for President Obama to weigh in on the Wisconsin unrest by suggesting an insolvent state government was more interested in destroying the public unions than meeting a $3 billion budget shortfall.

That characteristic eagerness to grandstand on extraneous issues, while ignoring federal crises, is characteristic of this administration. It will not make meaningful progress in addressing its own massive trillion-dollar debts, reexamine the looming disaster of ObamaCare, gear up to produce more gas and oil in the face of skyrocketing energy costs, or seriously explore ways to get unemployment down below 9%.

Yet in the last twenty-four months, we have learned that the president will indeed declare that: the governor of Wisconsin is using his state budget disaster largely to punish public servants; the police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, act “stupidly” and racially stereotype minorities (“typically”) as do most police departments; the state of Arizona harasses Hispanic children when they go out to eat ice cream, and thus Mexico’s efforts to sue the state should be joined by the U.S. government; much of our ills are due to “fat cat” bankers who junket to Las Vegas and the Super Bowl and cannot seem to grasp that at some point they have made enough money; the pro-democracy protestors in the streets of Tehran are not to be encouraged by our “meddling” (because of our past sins of involvement in Iran), but their counterparts in Cairo are to be encouraged by our meddling (despite our past sins of involvement in Egypt).

In addition, why would the president call for “sacrifice” in lean times, advising Americans to cut out going to dinner and to “put off” a vacation — while favoring Martha’s Vineyard for vacation, as the first lady (of erstwhile “downright mean country” repute) seems especially fond of Vail ski escapes in winter and Costa del Sol Mediterranean jaunts in summer? Is not symbolism important in these hard times?

Why, why, why all this? In a word, because that is what community organizers are supposed to do, even — or rather, especially — when they become the establishment. Cannot we answer Giuliani’s question? As a general rule, the “organizer” is not indigenous to the community, but as a sort of roaming utopian he travels widely to detect supposed foci of injustice (think an Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson), even to the point of worrying about professors being locked out of their homes or the tranquility of ice cream parlors in Arizona.

Beyond that, there’s this question.

Update: Hollywood lefty “David Kahane” spills the beans on “Gone, Wisconsin:”

So who are these pissant politicians and pundits and midwestern peons to defy Hussein’s imperial will? Who are they to rebel against the infinite enlargement of the union/welfare state he embodies, the very Cloward-Piven word made Alinskian political flesh, leading the Party of Take to fulfill its destiny and finally devour the Party of Give?

I guess what I’m trying to say is: Stop it. You’re scaring us.

You see, we haven’t planned for this. We have a form of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which is named after one of our great role models, Leonid Brezhnev, and which clearly states that once a country goes Communist, it can never go back. And while we don’t exactly embrace the retro term “Communist” — we prefer socialist, progressive, or, in a pinch, Democrat — we give ol’ Leo a sly tip of the hat whenever we bring down our AFL-CIO hammer and our SEIU sickle. We see every conflict between looters and moochers — excuse me! I mean “public servants” — and taxpaying suckers the way the Soviets looked at the Prague Spring, and it’s just a matter of time before the tanks roll, and the cries of “Dubček! Dubček!” are replaced once more with “Yes, we did!”

As “Kahane” writes, “Without public service, politicians such as Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd would have been just another couple of Irish barroom horndogs; Governor Moonbeam, Jerry Brown, another Buddhist moonbat; and Robert Byrd a humble white-sheeted follower of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Public service gave these men jobs — real jobs — and meaning to their lives. And you malevolent capitalists want to take it all away.”