Tim Nerenz on the latest Democrat gubernatorial recall candidate, Milwaukee Mayor (and 2010 gubernatorial election loser) Tom Barrett:

Mr. Barrett says he will put an end to the “civil war” that Governor Walker started in this state.  That’s funny stuff. There is indeed a civil war being waged, but it is not confined to the state of Wisconsin, and it did not begin when Governor Walker was sworn in.  He was sworn in after one of its battles was won; he is one of victory’s spoils.

Our second civil war is national, state, and local – it is the struggle between the taxpayers and the tax-eaters; it is the state and its wards versus the people who create the wealth and pay the bills.  It may look like the usual Democrat/Republican scrum to those who can’t see beyond; but those brands merely attached themselves to the side they hope will prevail. …

We have hit the wall.  A shrinking base of taxpayers has had enough of doing the heavy lifting for an increasingly ungrateful segment of society obsessed with taking an even bigger share of our incomes in order to obtain through state confiscation the things they refuse to purchase for themselves.

That is not a hateful thing to say; it is merely an observation that anyone can make for themselves any day of the week.  If a kid with the latest fashions and hottest sneakers listening to his iPod while gaming over the internet doesn’t have a sandwich, the guilt trip should not be laid at some other working family because they didn’t pay enough tax.

So please, Mr. Barrett, tell us how you propose to end this civil war?

Will you tell the tax-eaters they must live within their means and pay their fair share?  Or will you tell the taxpayers to be grateful you have left us with any of what we earned?  A war ends when one side wins and the other side surrenders – which America do you think is ready to throw in the towel because you have decided it’s time?

This is not about Mayor Barrett, or Governor Walker, or President Obama.  This is about you.  This is about your liberty, your family, your prosperity, your future.  Our civil war needs to be won – not with bullets and blood, but with ballots and blogs.  And it needs to be fought now, while we can still talk with each other, not later, when desperation moves people to violence.

No one ever thought they would be killing each other in Greece, either.  That’s where we are headed if we do not stop pretending that the same socialism that failed everywhere else in the world will somehow work here.  It hasn’t, and it won’t.

Before Barrett gets the nomination, of course, he will have to explain how and why he opposed, then used, the collective bargaining reforms pushed for by Walker and enacted by the Legislature.