"An especially vociferous progressive group calls itself 'We Are Wisconsin.' Evidently not."

George Will’s latest column, “Liberals’ Wisconsin Waterloo,” has been making the rounds:

Progressives want to recall Walker next year. Republicans hope they try. Wisconsin seems weary of attempts to overturn elections, and surely Obama does not want his allies squandering political money and the public’s patience. Since 1960, no Democrat has been elected president without carrying Wisconsin.

Walker has refuted the left’s sustaining conviction that a leftward-clicking ratchet guarantees that liberalism’s advances are irreversible.

Read the whole thing. I wonder about the title: the “Waterloo” metaphor isn’t quite accurate, since liberals and Democrats are still around to keep fighting on the same fronts. Napoleon’s army had to skedaddle, and never came back.

Huh. That makes me wish it was an apt metaphor.

Still, it works as far as it goes. I especially liked this part:

After Colorado in 2001 required public employees unions to have annual votes reauthorizing collection of dues, membership in the Colorado Association of Public Employees declined 70 percent. In 2005, Indiana stopped collecting dues from unionized public employees; in 2011, there are 90 percent fewer dues-paying members. In Utah, the end of automatic dues deductions for political activities in 2001 caused teachers’ payments to fall 90 percent. After a similar law passed in 1992 in Washington state, the percentage of teachers making such contributions declined from 82 to 11.

All those states took action against automatic dues payment years before Wisconsin did, and look at the results. Given a choice, union members drop out.

Puts a whole new spin on the “Walker is a dictator” meme, doesn’t it?