RUSH: I talked to Governor Walker yesterday afternoon after this program in an interview for the upcoming issue of the Limbaugh Letter, the most widely read and subscribed to political 
newsletter in the country, by the way. Mine. And we agreed that in terms of messaging, the whole term “collective bargaining rights” has somehow attached itself to people across the country as the essence of fairness such that if a state or an entity of some kind seeks to “deny citizens” — union members — their “collective bargaining rights,” it is seen as an act of profound unfairness.
It’s a messaging thing. Because, of course, “collective bargaining,” when you’re talking about a public union and public sector employees, who are they collectively bargaining against? Taxpayers. They’re bargaining against the people as a whole. Now, “collective bargaining rights” established itself as a phrase of fairness when there was a genuine evil boss — a cigar chomping, suit wearing, jet flying CEO of some greedy company — and collective bargaining was supposed to be the essence of fairness, the workers getting the little crumbs that they could. So the whole concept of “collective bargaining rights” in the minds of the ignorant, the people that don’t pay a whole lot of attention, people who are governed by their feelings and emotions, it’s a tough one to overcome.
There’s gonna have to be something to replace “collective bargaining rights” here as a phrase to explain what’s going on. You could say it’s “money laundering;” you can say it’s “usurpation of taxpayer dollars,” ’cause that’s what it is. But still, this is the one thing that would argue against the race being close is the perception that somehow the evil Republicans wanted to deny fairness and a right to fair negotiations: Collective bargaining. Nevertheless, this 7,000-vote victory makes far more sense. Now, there’s a part of me that would love to believe that this whole thing was a Republican ploy. Don’t you think the same way?
There’s a part of me that would love to believe that this county clerk, Ms. Nickolaus, held those votes back on purpose, to be sprung just the way she sprung them, to totally deflate and take the air out of the Democrats who were prancing around victorious. Mayor Daley used to do it. Mayor Daley used to hold back on reporting Cook County until the downstate votes came in from Illinois, the conservative part. He waited to find out how much he needed. Mayor Daley waited to find out what the Democrats needed from Cook County. (Ask the Kennedy family about this. It’s exactly what happened.)
He would know how many votes he needed to win. Now, that’s not what happened here. As much as much as we might dream, as much as we might enjoy seeing the Democrats getting a little of their own back, it didn’t happen. We would still love to see this. This whole collective bargaining notion, again, federal employees do not have it. This could be part of the education campaign that needs to be undertaken here. Federal employees do not have collective bargaining rights against the citizens of the country. None of Obama’s federal employees do, and it was Jimmy Carter (thanks to Jimmy Carter) that federal government employees do not have collective bargaining rights.
FDR was opposed to them. I think George Meany was opposed to them, one of the early labor leaders. The Feds did have ’em and Jimmy Carter took them away in 1978. So they only had ’em for a few years. They were first given collective bargaining rights, unions were, public unions, by JFK back in 1963. So they had ’em for 15 years; then they were taken away by Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, who, by the way… Jimmy Carter… I’m sure, folks, there’s somebody at the Democrat Party sending out marching orders, talking points, ’cause Jimmy Carter is out saying today that the number one form of human rights abuse in the world is discrimination against women.
Discrimination against women, on the very day that Harry Reid admits that he will not pay for his granddaughters to have abortions. He wants to wait for the federal government to do it. That’s why he will not support a compromise here. Chuck Schumer is out talking about the Republicans want to deny women their health funds and so forth. They’re code words for abortion, and Jimmy Carter joins this cacophony with allegation that the discrimination against women, worldwide, is the number one form of human rights abuse. At any rate, I was talking to Governor Walker yesterday. We were talking about this fact that there were no collective bargaining rights for federal union employees, but there are in his state.
He made the point, “Tell ’em they really should take their complaint to President Obama, because he does not grant federal employees collective bargaining rights.”
I said, “Governor, they’re not interested in any of that. This is all about you. They’re coming after you. They’re trying to destroy you personally and politically,” which he knows.
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