Governor Scott Walker has long claimed his signature legislation to end collective bargaining rights was about jobs and closing the state's budget deficit, a dubious claim at best, however new video released from January of last year reveals that his true motivations, confessed to a billionaire, were to transform the state of Wisconsin into a permanently-red, right-to-work state.
Madison - A filmmaker released a video Thursday that shows Gov. Scott Walker saying he would use "divide and conquer" as a strategy against unions.
Walker made the comments to Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks, who has since given $510,000 to the governor's campaign - making her Walker's single-largest donor and the largest known donor to a candidate in state history. [...]
In the video, Hendricks told Walker she wanted to discuss "controversial" subjects away from reporters, asking him:
"Any chance we'll ever get to be a completely red state and work on these unions -"
"Oh, yeah," Walker broke in.
"- and become a right-to-work?" Hendricks continued. "What can we do to help you?"
"Well, we're going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill," Walker said. "The first step is we're going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer."
The video was shot on January 18 of last year, weeks before Walker introduced the legislation that would result in months of protests and his impending recall.
Karl Rove tried to use similar tactics to turn America into a permanently-red country with an everlasting Republican super-majority. It didn't work, but that's not a case for complacency at the state level where Walker clearly has his sights set on the same goal.
