Governor Scott Walker won a huge recall election on Tuesday that was clearly a huge blow to organized labor and Democrats in Wisconsin. Almost as soon as the results were in, those groups started spreading excuses to explain their loss and continued their effort to undermine a Governor with whom they disagree. Those excuses attempt to impact the narrative of what this election meant. Several members of the media seemingly abetted this attempt to change the narrative on Wednesday.
Politico’s Glenn Thrush declared that the only take away from the election is that money “shouts” and he based that on the claims that “conservative groups outspent unions and progressives in Wisconsin by an estimated SEVEN-TO-ONE.” Many other members of the media emphasized this point and mentioned the Citizen United Supreme Court Decision as the reason for the disparity.
Ed Schultz proclaimed on Wednesday that you can never convince him that “the outcome of this election would have been the same if the money was equal or near equal on both sides.” As anyone that has watched his show knows, facts don’t have much impact on Ed Schultz’s opinion, but someone should let him know that the money was about equal.
As Ben Shapiro points out at Breitbart.com, those reports claiming the spending has been completely one sided ignore about $20 million that unions invested into the recall election. At the end of the day, Walker spent about $30 million, while unions spent somewhere near $25 million. That is hardly the 7-1 disparity that many are reporting and paints a very different picture as to the reason for Walker’s victory.
In addition, the Citizens United ruling had zero impact on the recall election, despite what many liberal pundits would claim. All of the donations that made a difference in this election could have been made before this ruling occurred. Furthermore, the very same people complaining about a possible spending advantage for Walker seemed to be silent in 2008 when President Obama had a huge financial advantage over Senator McCain.
Once these realities are taken into consideration, it is clear that the real take away from this election isn’t spending, but that the voters really did affirm Governor Walker and his policies.
