It's no surprise that Scott Walker, Scott Fitzgerald (WI Senate Majority Leader) and their supporters responded to the WI Senate Dem walkout on Thursday, Feb 17th with accusations that the Dems were preventing democracy from taking place.
For starters, a Cap Times editorial informs us that
[w]hen Democratic members of the state Senate walked out of the Capitol on Thursday — denying the Republican majority the quorum necessary to pass the legislation — they were attacked by Walker and his cronies. The governor called the boycott a “stunt” and claimed the Democrats were disrespecting democracy.
After all, Walker’s backers noted, the governor and his Republican allies won an election last November.
That is true.
Further more, according to Bill Lueders, columnist for the Madison weekly The Isthmus,
The throng of reporters present – about two dozen in all – filed into a conference room, where Sen. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald spun the absence of his Democratic colleagues as a profound affront to the spirit of democracy embraced by his party.
“I’m not sure why they didn’t show up,” he stated, as though it were just the latest in a series of Democratic affronts. “The rest of the process, the Democrats didn’t participate. And today they just checked out.
“That’s not democracy,” Fitzgerald clucked. “This is the ultimate shutdown – not showing up for work.”
In other words, according to Fitzgerald, by trying to prevent a vote, WI Senate Dems are subverting democracy.
But wait... Isn't the filibuster process in the US Senate an effort to prevent a vote, and thus, by Fitzgerald's logic, a subversion of democracy?
However, Republican hypocrisy isn't the point of this diary - the point is that Republicans, both in Wisconsin and across the country, are misconstruing the actual meaning of democracy, especially as elucidated in the First Amendment.
According to the Cap Times editorial, Republicans could use a bit of schooling from a young political science student at the University of Wisconsin:
David Vines, a University of Wisconsin student, joined the mass protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights on Monday. The political science student marched on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. He slept overnight in the Capitol to make sure that the Legislature did not approve Walker’s plan without a fight.
Why? “This is what the founders intended,” says Vine
The editorial goes on to quote the iconic Wisconsin governor, Fightin' Bob LaFollette, who said, basically, that democracy doesn't end at 8 (or 7, or 9) pm on election Tuesdays, but rather requires constant effort on the part of citizens. And that, of course is exactly what the First Amendment says:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
And so, the student, David Vines tried to teach that lesson to the Republicans of Wisconsin:
The sign that David Vines carried as he marched Thursday declared for: “First Amendment remedies!” [Because t]he purpose of the First Amendment — the essential amendment for those who believe in a real and robust democracy — was to detail the rights of citizens to object when wrongheaded and dangerous policies are proposed by their elected officials.
Both the Leuders article and the Cap Times editorial are linked above, and the full articles are worth a read.
On a personal note, I left Madison 5 months ago - I was there for the same-sex marriage amendment rallies in 2004 (as well as John Kerry's 80,000-person strong campaign rally) and the pro-immigration rallies in 2006; clearly, they were nothing like this, and I'm a little jealous that I'm not there now. I talked to one of my former colleagues at the UW, and she tells me that campus is electric, but people are worried about the Koch Brothers' imported rally planned for Saturday.