"Win One For the Gipper."

In a nail-biting finish that saw Democrats fail to recapture the state senate in Wisconsin, winning only two of the six Republican seats that were up for recall, I'm reminded more of a basketball game, a baseball game, or even a football game between bitter rivals, than an actual political contest.

Democrats failed late Tuesday in their effort to gain control of the Wisconsin state senate as Republican incumbents won four of six recall elections.

The outcome was a big setback for Democrats, organized labor, and progressive groups who'd sought retribution against six GOP allies of Gov. Scott Walker, who earlier this year enacted a labor law overhaul that ended collective bargaining rights for many public sector workers.

The recall elections attracted millions of dollars of investment from both liberals and conservatives across the nation.

Most at risk as voting started Tuesday appeared to be three Republicans, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper and Dan Kapanke, all of whom had barely won their races in 2008.

Kapanke and Hopper lost, but Darling won with 54 percent with most of the precincts counted, partly due to her outperforming her 2008 majority in heavily Republican Waukesha County.

In 2008, Darling had won her district by a mere 1,007 out of more than 99,000 votes cast. Her district went narrowly for Barack Obama in 2008.

Three other Republican lawmakers also survived the Democratic recall effort: Sen. Robert Cowles, Sen. Sheila Harsdorf and Sen. Luther Olsen.

With the split in Wisconsin’s Senate at 19 Republicans and 14 Democrats as the day began, a turnover of three would have changed party control.

Ronald Reagan, himself no friend of unions,[0] immortalized the saying, "Win one for the Gipper," a line he delivered in the movie, Knute Rockney, All American. [1]

Rather than take inventory of the direction in which coach Walker was taking the state at the behest of the front office (the Koch Brothers), it appears that Republicans, by the legion, turned out to support the Home Team, incumbent Republican candidates. Clearly, not all Republicans resorted to boosterism, but a sufficient number did to assure that the Wisconsin State senate would continue to fly the colors of the Home Team--Red instead of Blue.

In one hotly contested district, some believe that the win for the Republican incumbent was staged. That district's results, which should have been one of the first, was the last. To raise suspicions further, and a few eyebrows, the delay in tallying votes in that district came from one Kathy Nickolaus.

Kathy Nickolaus, the county clerk in question, has a "history of secretive and erratic handling" of results, says John Nichols at The Nation. She was responsible for skewed results in a 2006 Assembly race, and tallies votes on her home computer. What's more, she "apparently knew of this 'mistake' for 29 hours before reporting it." Who needs a conspiracy theory? "The facts raise the questions."[2]

Both Teams, Right and Left, will, from their trunk of expediency, unpack their smiley faces, and attach them to the Wisconsin results. For all the hurrahs of victory, the real losers, as usual, are the American people--those mired deeply in a morass of ideological quicksand, more vested in winning, regardless of the personal cost, and those with no ideological ax to grind, and with no demons to destroy, whose only goal is to pursue what's best for the American people, despite the canons of party politics.

Republicans--in Wisconsin and elsewhere--don't seem to understand: They're working against their self-interest, even as they struggle to reconcile the self-inflicted blows to their self-interest with a conservative philosophy that asks for nothing less than total commitment, even if that commitment kills them, and the nation in which they live.

The Wisconsin elections were seen as an early indicator (weather vane) of the direction political winds favored in the upcoming 2012 national elections. In that case, I say the Democratic Party will need its own "Gipper" to inspire and galvanize its base.

Despite the drive, to begin in November of this year, to collect more than half a million signatures of Wisconsin registered voters to recall Scott Walker, it will be pretty near impossible for Democrats to unseat Walker in a recall election, given the almost unanimous support for Republicans, and Republican ideological solutions (which have failed time and again), rather than what works, evidenced by the recent elections there, in a state known for it historical support of union ideals and collective bargaining.

Nevertheless, I'll do my part, and hope for the best, because I believe that the Scott Walkers of this nation (and we have several in our state and federal governments), would do whatever is in their power to crush the democratic process, and govern more from fiat, and threats, than consensus.

Primed to believe that the economy's descent into an economic Hades was caused by satanic union demands, onerous, and evil government regulations, and diabolically liberal, but misguided legislation to extend unemployment insurance for indolent, work-evasive, unemployed workers, Republicans, themselves, have crossed over to the "dark side" along with those they believe are possessed by the demons of liberalism.

This country is sliding into an economic Hell of its own making. Our wounds have been self-inflicted (consider the eleventh-hour raising of the debt ceiling to avoid defaulting, the resulting S&P AA+ downgraded rating, and the Dow's reaction to it, as well as to world-wide economic upheavals that we had a hand in creating). These wounds were inflicted so that one team (the Republican party) would be crowned the winner in a game where everyone loses, if the Home Team wins.

The nation's demon isn't liberalism, but a Republican ideology which is fiercely fought for and defended by Right-leaning Fans, and the Home Team, one which has enshrined a dogma of small government, free trade, and laissez faire economics, although it's clear that these failed principles serve the special interests of major corporations more than people, some of which have shown by their actions, that they don't give a damn about anything but their profit margins, and the size of their executive bonuses.

When the chips were down, and their back was against the wall, and the momentum was felt to be on the side of their opponents, Wisconsin Republicans were told to go out and "Win one for the Gipper!"

Which they did. The score was 4 out of 6.

And the outcome: Those Fans who cheered and boosted the Home Team, actually lost the game. They lost by winning.

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