As a Wisconsin native, I feel compelled to respond to Charles Lane’s Feb. 7 op-ed column, “Scott Walker, progressive”:
Mr. Walker campaigned for governor of Wisconsin as a moderate, budget-minded conservative, but once in office he set to work as a reactionary ideologue, an act of fundamental dishonesty. Mr. Walker’s disingenuously named “Budget Repair Bill” was more about politics than economics because it targeted the liberal teachers’ union while exempting the conservative police and firefighters’ unions.
Mr. Walker’s actions have been extremely divisive, especially in small-town Wisconsin, where people have been encouraged to disparage the hard-working teachers who are their neighbors and who educate their children. Mr. Walker followed up his anti-teacher actions and cuts to public education with a series of authoritarian acts that have further alienated the people of Wisconsin, such as altering the boundaries of legislative districts in the middle of last year’s recall campaign targeting legislators.
More than a century ago, Wisconsin Progressive Robert La Follette swept away politicians like Mr. Walker, whom he termed “the feudal serfs of corporate capital,” and he made Wisconsin a bellwether of bipartisan and progressive politics. All of this now stands at risk from Scott Walker, reactionary.
Paul Rood, Silver Spring
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