Proving that great minds think alike, the Ripon Commonwealth Press:

With this redux of the 2010 gubernatorial election, Barrett tees up the ball that Walker slammed a year ago last February.

But how to improve the state?

That’s the key question for the next four weeks.

For better or worse — and it seems everyone has made up their minds on the matter — Walker has answered the question during the first one-third of his term.

And his opponent?

Barrett has yet to say how much he would spend to restore cuts to education, local governments or health care, or how he would get the money. Neither he nor his chief rival, former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, gave details during the primary campaign on how they would roll back Walker’s cuts. (Secretary of State Doug La Follette and especially state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout were more forthcoming. That they garnered few votes relative to their opponents says more about us than it does about them.)

Now it’s time for Barrett to offer a specific plan for what he would do, and undo, to keep Wisconsin’s fiscal house in order while assuring that the truly needy receive care, public schools and universities are adequately financed, aid to local units of government is sufficient and state agencies exercise the fiscal austerity shown by a private sector that has balanced budgets through efficiencies, benefit cuts, wage freezes and layoffs.

The Commonwealth Press adds this about the state’s fiscal condition, blame for which goes both directions since the state’s books are legally, not correctly, balanced:

Politics by definition … is a zero-sum game.

“Fairness” and “equity” are abstractions anchored only in the gains or losses of the observer. That will remain the case long after Barrett and Walker exit the political stage.

But what won’t, what shouldn’t, change is this: Be they Democrats or Republicans, Wisconsin’s governors and legislators should never again put this state in a position where year after year they have to scramble to offset red ink because they didn’t have the fiscal discipline — the statesmanship — to spend within their means.

Now there’s a flag to which we can all salute.