Scott Walker Tape Surfaces: “Divide and Conquer” Strategy Clear from Day One

Folks, it is official.  Scott Walker is a liar.

You see, when Walker was campaigning in 2010 for Governor of Wisconsin, he never told the public that he would eliminate collective bargaining for public employee unions.  Nor that he intended to use a “divide and conquer” strategy.  But due to a video that surfaced a day ago, that is indeed exactly what Walker intended all along.  In this recording, Walker used the words “divide and conquer” clearly to one of his biggest fund-raisers, Beloit (WI) billionaire Diane Hendricks; she, of course, approved of this. 

This recording was made in January of 2011, a few weeks before Walker “dropped the bomb” and announced that his “budget-repair” bill would have a provision in it to strip public employee union members of their collective bargaining rights.

And lest anyone complain that this somehow is a “gotcha” moment — well, Walker did this to himself, talking with a real, Republican backer.  Since he uttered those words, Ms. Hendricks has given over $500,000 to Walker’s campaign, so it’s obvious what Walker intended.

Please see this link from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel for further details:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/barrett-walker-at-odds-over-divide-and-conquer-union-remark-oi5coda-151148935.html

While Walker now says he “doesn’t remember” what he said back in January of ’11, and now just wants to “move forward,” this is a typical politician “non-denial denial.”  None of us should believe it.

Democratic opponent Tom Barrett, the current Mayor of Milwaukee, astutely analyzes why Walker said such a thing.  In this quote from the above-cited Journal-Sentinel article:

Barrett said that he first heard about the video Thursday night while driving home from Wausau and was “flabbergasted at his language.””If you want to know when Scott Walker is really telling the truth, it’s when he’s talking to billionaires and when he thinks he’s talking to billionaires,” Barrett said. “He says one thing to the public, but to people who give him $500,000 or to people he thinks are giving him $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, his message is completely different.”

All of this is important because Walker insists that he does not want to make Wisconsin a “right-to-work” state.  “Right-to-work” states make it harder for existing unions to operate, and almost impossible for new unions to arise, due to its onerous provisions against such practices.  Or as the recently surfaced video says (quoting from the above article):

In the conversation on the video, Hendricks was seen asking Walker about right-to-work legislation. “Any chance we’ll ever get to be a completely red state and work on these unions – ”

“Oh, yeah,” Walker broke in.

“- and become a right-to-work?” Hendricks continued. “What can we do to help you?”

“Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill,” Walker said. “The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer. So for us, the base we get for that is the fact that we’ve got – budgetarily we can’t afford not to. If we have collective bargaining agreements in place, there’s no way not only the state but local governments can balance things out . . . That opens the door once we do that. That’s your bigger problem right there.”

So that just goes to show you, folks.  Walker’s intentions — that is, to break unions — were clear from the moment he took office.  Any denial to the contrary is just nonsense; worse than that, it shows Walker’s mendacity in full measure.

So don’t fall for the Walker “non-denial denials.”  Because they just don’t make sense.