New tone, war on women, etc, but who am I kidding?  We all know that those rules only apply to Republicans.  Behold, South Carolina's outgoing AFL-CIO president, Donna Dewitt, repeatedly taking a metal bat to a pinata adorned with an image of Republican Gov. Nikki Haley's face.  Especially classy are the shouts from lookers-on, encouraging Dewitt "hit her again!"  I eagerly await an explanation of how this was somehow inspired by the Tea Party's "climate of hate," or whatever:
 

Any regrets over this lovely display, Donna?  Nah.  As Dennis Prager has said for years, being a liberal means never having to say you're sorry:
 

Dewitt told ABC News she has no regrets about incident and said there was "no ill intent" in what she was doing.  Dewitt said her colleagues brought the pinata and were using it as a "memoir" of Haley's words and actions towards unions in her time as governor..."We've been the brunt of her comments now for two years and that's what the whole thing was.  She's been whacking at us over the last two years," Dewitt, who has been president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO for the past 16 years and will retire at the end of June, continued.

An email from the national AFL-CIO expressed some concern over the video -- not because sends the wrong message, but because it could do political damage:
 

“Do you think we can get this video pulled,” asked a national AFL-CIO official in an email to Palmetto State union sources. The author of the email also worried the video might get “picked up by tea partiers, maybe even Haley herself, to attack labor again.”

I wonder how many broadcast hours MSNBC would devote to this "deeply troubling" manifestation of "right-wing violence" if it were a conservative activist teeing off on a photo of, say, Kathleen Sebelius.  Maybe they'd even edit out the fact that Dewitt is a female, allowing them to hype their chosen "war on women" narrative.  In fact, I'd bet Mitt Romney would be asked to denounce it, probably within an hour of the clip going viral.  I'll leave you with the third ranking House Democrat blathering about Mitt Romney's "raping" of companies during his time at bain.  I skimmed past the quote in a post yesterday but figured it was worth including video of this productive contribution to the Party of Ideas' precious "civility:"
 

Note well Clyburn's self-congratulatory remark that he doesn't take contributions from "payday lenders."  Oops.

The good news?  The One wasn't shown up by a convicted felon this time around.  The bad news?  He still failed to secure supermajorities in a pair of virtually uncontested presidential primaries last night.  In Kentucky, Obama won only 58 percent of Democrats, with 42 percent of his party's voters casting ballots for "uncommitted" over a sitting president.  In Arkansas, an obscure attorney took a similar share of the primary vote from Obama.  But as the Washington Post will tell you, a massacre perpetrated by a Mormon militia in 1857 might be "problematic" for Mitt Romney down in Razorback country this fall.  Or something.  As fun as these symbolic anti-Obama tallies may be, I'm not sure how predictive they are in looking ahead to November.  I suppose I wouldn't want to be a Democrat down-ticket from Obama in either of these states, although his humiliation in West Virginia a few weeks back probably won't prevent his lapdog Sen. Joe Manchin from winning re-election on the same day the state goes heavily for Romney. 

Speaking of Romney, he inched ever closer to the magic nomination number on Tuesday, pulling within 89 delegates of hitting the requisite 1,144 mark.  He'll probably clinch things officially in the Texas primary next week.  One item of note from the GOP side of things: The former Massachusetts Governor carried 67 percent of the primary vote in Kentucky.  Rep. Ron Paul barely attracted 12 percent.  But because Paul stopped actively campaigning a few weeks ago, it's less of a story that he got smashed in the state his son, Rand Paul, represents in the US Senate.  As he cruised to a duo of primary victories, Romney made a lucrative fundraising swing in New York, and is expected to pull in millions more later this week at Boston-area events.

Townhall has chosen Florida GOP Rep. Allen West to grace the cover of our June issue!  Order Townhall Magazine today to read our EXCLUSIVE interview with West and find out more about his life, leadership, what shocked him on arriving in D.C., and how he would respond to a request to be VP on the 2012 Republican ticket.

More hot topics from the June issue:

-- Meet a new civil rights heroine: 23-year-old Lila Rose calls the battle to stop abortion 'the greatest civil rights movement ever,' but it's a fight she seems to be winning.

-- Strength in the shadows: read a touching tribute to the CIA and Navy SEALS who sacrifice for our nation without fanfare.

-- Abortions and the military: will the military become the pro-choice movement's new battleground to make government-funded abortion a part of American public policy? And will the result be more harm to women and the country they are fighting to defend?

Order here to make sure you don't miss out on Townhall's latest in-depth reports!

The end is near. NASCAR has signed a deal with the EPA. Don't worry, the cars aren't being directly impacted yet, but you can bet this is only the first step to more and more "partnerships" down the road between the out of control government agency and the economy boosting, fossil fuel burning sport. 

President Obama’s eco-friendly EPA inked a green partnership deal with high-octane NASCAR Monday to promote recycling and environmentally-friendly products to the sport’s millions of fans.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, NASCAR will encourage fans to buy “sustainable concessions” at races, expand the use of “safer chemical products,” conserve water, reduce waste, promote recycling, push products approved by the EPA that have a small enviro footprint and encourage suppliers to get an “E3 tuneup” aimed at promoting sustainable manufacturing.

As if we don't have enough "go green" getting shoved down our throats already. If we drink green beer at NASCAR does that count?

A video posted to YouTube shows South Carolina AFL-CIO President Donna Dewitt beating a pinata with a photo attachment of Governor Nikki Haley. Whoever posted this version of the video justified the beating in the video description box.  (Irony alert in bold and posted below) Embedding has been disabled, which is why I have provided screen shots instead of video.

Gov. Nikki Haley has been vicious to organized labor, saying in her State of the State address that "unions are not needed, wanted or welcome in South Carolina." After years of being treated like a union thug, Donna Dewitt gets sweet revenge at a retirement reception in her honor.

UPDATE: Found an embed of the video with a different description.

Maybe Dewitt has been treated like a union thug because she actually is one.

"I will say she looks like a tough old girl here," Dewitt says before getting started as others in the video cheered her on.

"Wait until her face comes around, wack her!" someone says in the background as others cheer loudly. "Whack her again! Hit her again!"

South Carolina is a right to work state and Haley was at the forefront of the battle against the National Labor Relations Board which blocked Boeing from building a plant in the state for months due to strict union rules.

Here is some reaction from Twitchy:

The question now is, will President Obama call Haley to apologize for Dewitt's behavior as he did with liberal activist Sandra Fluke? After all, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is one of Obama's most frequent White House visitors and was his guest of honor at this year's State of the Union Address.

But this kind of behavior from the left actually isn't anything new. When SB 1070 passed in 2010, radical open border groups attached a photo of Republican Governor Jan Brewer to a pinata and proceeded to tell children to beat it.

On Greta Van Susteren’s show Tuesday night former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced she is endorsing longtime Utah Senator Orrin Hatch in the state's Republican primary. Fast forward to the 7:05 mark to listen in.

(Video courtesy of SarahNET)

Half-truths and partisan dissembling are regular features in American politics, and neither side is blameless in the endless spin cycle.  To paraphrase the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, everyone is entitled to his own opinion -- not his own facts.  Democrats seem to be working harder than usual to invent and misconstrue facts for political advantage.  Let's run through today's distortions and flat-out lies:  (1) An Obama spokesman claimed on CNN that the campaign did not reach out to (fleeting) Democratic apostate Cory Booker to, ahem, "encourage" him to walk back his problematic comments on Sunday's Meet the Press.  Except...Booker himself has said the opposite, and NBC's Chuck Todd reported that "multiple conversations" took place:
 

This is a relatively inconsequential dust-up, of course, but it illustrates a larger point: Team Obama is willing to insult voters' collective intelligence and lie in order to make Booker's "change of heart" seem authentic.  Everyone understands what happened here.  Booker spoke his mind, violating a sacrosanct campaign talking point in doing so. He was then upbraided and pressured into "clarifying" his point, and as a loyal foot soldier, he complied.  To pretend otherwise isn't credible, which is why Labolt's grimacing and awkward tale is painful to watch.  Verdict: Highly-parsed lie.

(2) The Democratic National Committee tweeted this whopper today:
 

RT @TheDemocrats: Under President Obama, government spending is at the lowest level in nearly 60 years. http://j.mp/MDK69n

Excuse me?  First of all, the tendentious piece they link to argues that the rate of spending increase under Obama is the slowest its been since the 1950s, which is a separate claim from the laughable assertion Debbie Wasserman Schultz's shop tweeted out.  The column fails to take into account that Obama has made permanent, and is building off of, "emergency" spending levels that he himself has supported -- both as a Senator (TARP) and as president (the stimulus).  Thus any measure of his "slow" rate of growth is highly misleading, due to the historically-inflated baseline from which he started.  So in context, it's a bogus statistic, but at least it's rooted in some degree of reality.  What the Democrats spun this into is the howler that "government spending is at the lowest level" in many decades under this administration.  Forget the fact that Obama has presided over four straight trillion-dollar-plus annual deficits.  Forget that he's added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents (and change) combined.  Forget that his reckless budgets propose to pour trillions more into America's red sea.  Just look at this chart, and try to reconcile it with the statement advanced by the Democrat Party this afternoon:
 

Verdict: Flagrant, pants-on-fire lie.  Say what you will about DWS, she certainly sets the tone over at the DNC.

(3) President Obama's SuperPAC -- which still has not returned its $1 million donation from serial misogynist and Mormon-baiter Bill Maher -- is up with a new ad slamming Mitt Romney's wicked doings at Bain Capital:
 

The company this woman worked for, Ampad, went under in January 2000 -- almost a year after Mitt Romney left Bain Capital to save the Winter Olympics.  Yes, Romney was there when the initial investment occurred, but he was far less involved in the firm's management of Ampad than someone else who curiously escaped scrutiny in the ad (via ABC News):
 

Here’s what the Obama Web video doesn’t mention: A top Obama donor and fundraiser had a much more direct tie to the controversy and actually served on the board of directors at Richardson, Texas-based Ampad, which makes office paper products. Jonathan Lavine is a long-time Bain Capital executive and co-owner of the Boston Celtics. He is also one of President Obama’s most prolific fundraisers. He has already raised more than $200,000 for the Obama campaign this election, according to Federal Election Commission records. Lavine started working for Bain in 1993. He was one of three Bain executives who served on the board of directors of Ampad for several years, a post he held until 1999. Here’s a news release announcing his departure from the company in April 1999. Lavine’s placement on the board of Ampad suggests he had a more direct role than Romney in the series of events surrounding the layoffs, labor disputes and eventual bankruptcy of the Marion, Ind., factory featured in the Obama campaign video.

Well, well, well.  What tangled webs they weave.  In this case, the Obama backers' sin is one of omission -- harping on Bain's relatively few instances of failure, while refusing to acknowledge their own ally's outsized role in this highlighted incident.  Overall, Bain Capital's record was exemplary.  Don't ask me, or Cory Booker, or Steve Rattner, or Harold Ford Jr...ask Democrat Senator Mark Warner:
 

Boy, this Bain stuff is really unraveling, huh?  No matter.  They've got to keep plucking this chicken; The One has pronounced it a central issue of the campaign.  Verdict: Intentionally incomplete dishonesty.

UPDATE - While we're on the subject of Democrats and lies, here's the most hilarious defense of alleged plagiarist and faux Native American Elizabeth Warren I've seen to date:
 

Warren's claim to be "part Indian" is correct in mythical terms. Every old-school white Oklahoman is in this regard even if this in nominally not true. But it is not a lie to want to be Indian and to imagine your ancestors were. It is to be free of Europeanism... I hope Elizabeth Warren doesn't back down on this, because wanting to be Indian, like Hawkeye, makes us in a deeper sense fully American.

What about confusing that very special desire with the truth, and exploiting it for professional advantage?  Is that "mythically" correct, as well?  Verdict: Ha!

As if getting groped and naked scanned at the airport wasn't enough, not to mention dealing with the entitled, power trip attitudes of many TSA agents, Senate Democrats want you to pay even more for it.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday moved forward with legislation to increase airline passenger security fees, beating back a GOP attempt to keep them at current levels.

The 2013 Homeland Security appropriations bill would increase one-way fees for passengers from $2.50 to $5 in order to close a budget shortfall at the Transportation Security Administration.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said the $350 million in funding would otherwise come from taxpayers and argued it is better to stick passengers who rely on TSA with the bill.

TSA hasn't stopped a single terror attempt since being founded after 9/11.

Let me translate Powell's answer:

I just want to be liked by everyone so I will hem and haw about how each candidate has a chance to win; therefore, Americans will continue to see me as a "thoughtful" non-partisan, but I know just like Obama knew his same-sex marriage position that I will endorse the black guy just like I did in 2008.

Celebrate good times, liberals -- President Obama has again vaulted ahead of Mitt Romney in a national poll:
 

After months of aggressive campaigning on jobs and the economy, President Obama and Mitt Romney, his likely Republican challenger, are locked in a dead heat over who could fix the problem foremost on voters’ minds, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The parity on economic issues foreshadows what probably will continue to be a tough and negative campaign. Overall, voters would be split 49 percent for Obama and 46 percent for Romney if the November election were held now. On handling the economy, they are tied at 47 percent.

Despite flare-ups over issues including contraception and same-sex marriage, more than half of all Americans cite the economy as the one concern that will decide their vote in the fall, relegating others — such as health care, taxes and the federal deficit — to single-digit status. More than eight in 10 Americans still rate the national economy negatively, but there are strains of optimism as it continues to recover from the collapse of 2008. A majority of Americans — 54 percent — say they are more hopeful than anxious about the situation over the next few years, while 58 percent are bullish about their financial prospects.

In this new survey, the president's job approval slipped back underwater (47/49), and his economic marks sank even further (42/55).  So how does Obama manage to pull ahead of Romney in the head-to-head match up in light of his eroded standing?  He gets by with a little help from his friend -- the WaPo/ABC News pollster.  Ed Morrissey blows the lid off of this survey's risible partisan sample:
 

Today’s D/R/I is 32/22/38, which means this model would only be predictive for a turnout model where only 22% of voters are Republican.  Just to remind readers, the 2008 turnout split from exit polls showed a 39/32/29 split, and that was considered a nadir for Republican turnout.  In the 2010 midterms, the split was 35/35/30.

Let's see if I understand this correctly.  WaPo/ABC News' sample handed Democrats a ten point edge (three points higher than 2008 -- a banner year for Democrats), and projected that Republicans would comprise less than a quarter of the electorate in November...and Romney is still within the margin of error?  This outcome has to be disconcerting for the Obama campaign, even as they put on a happy face over the top-line results.  It also may be time for the Washington Post and ABC News to start censoring their polling methodology again, because they're embarrassing themselves.  As I've written previously, the purpose of polling should be to accurately gauge public opinion; it should not be to manipulate the numbers to manufacture "good" news for your preferred candidate.  If the latter goal is the new standard, I'd be happy to roll out another IGB poll* showing Mitt Romney leading Obama by, let's say, 19 points among registered voters.  Useless, bias-massaging polls are fun, aren't they?  In any case, the Obama campaign's grand scheme to undermine Romney's advantage on the economy is to paint him as a "vampire capitalist" who destroyed businesses for profit.  (A top Democrat is now classily using rape imagery to demagogue Bain).  This idiotic attack strategy is been rebuffed by an expanding roster of Obama allies, the latest of whom is former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell:
 

Rendell joined the chorus of criticism of Obama’s attacks on finance, whose leaders have written checks to many members of both parties. “I think they’re very disappointing,” Rendell said of the ads attacking Bain. “I think Bain is fair game, because Romney has made it fair game. But I think how you examine it, the tone, what you say, is important as well.” As for Booker, “I admire him,” Rendell said. “People in politics should tell the truth. He could have qualified it better, he could have framed it better, but if you’re in this business, none of us like negative ads.”

Maybe some Democrats are wary of these economically-illiterate and hypocritical criticisms because they've seen the fresh numbers from Rasmussen:
 

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 44% of Likely U.S. Voters believe that Romney’s track record in business is primarily a reason to vote for him. Thirty-three percent (33%) see his business career as chiefly a reason to vote against him ... Fifty-five percent (55%) voters believe venture capital companies are better at creating jobs than government programs are.  Only 26% see government programs as better job creators. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure. That’s essentially unchanged from January.

Obama has even lost his most devoted center-right sycophant on this issue. If you're still not convinced of O's epic Bain bust, Jennifer Rubin convincingly enumerates the persuasive evidence.  I'd posit that it might be time for Team O to go back to the drawing board, but what else do they have?  This is their gameplan.  Their entire re-election strategy is predicated on fear-mongering about Republican solutions, demonizing Mitt Romney's private sector experience, and pretending that Obama's record isn't a fetid ash heap of broken promises, economic hardship, suffocating debt, and demonstrable failure.  That last bit presents impossibly tough sledding, so more unresponsive, mindless campaign babble it is!  After all, this campaign "is going to be about" Bain Captial, come hell or high water -- so sayeth The One.  Oh goodie.

UPDATE - The latest NBC/WSJ poll has Obama up four over Romney overall, leading among Indies by eight, and even beating Romney with seniors.  I'm very skeptical of those last two data points, and Allahpundit notices another odd data point:
 

Last month’s WSJ poll had it 43D/39R/14I if you included leaners. The new poll: 44D/36R/16I. The spread between Democrats and Republicans has increased by four points since April — and yet O’s lead over Romney has shrunk by two points. Hmmmm.

Hmm, indeed.  Sample skews can be magical things, my friends.

*IGB is a polling firm that exists exclusively in this author's mind.  Methodology inquiries will be ignored.  Thank you.

NEWT: "Obama's a pretty bad venture capitalist, and remember, he's doing it with your money."

If you can't defend an attack with factual information and without hypocrisy, making the attack in the first place probably isn't the best idea. Team Obama's ongoing attack on Mitt Romney's connection to Bain Capital, Bain Capital and private equity in general, really isn't working.

As Cooper mentioned in the clip above, Obama recently held a series of fundraisers with heads of private equity firms. Also, let's go back to 2008 when President Obama raised significantly more money from Wall Street than GOP rival John McCain.

Overall, 57 percent of this industry's contributions to the race (including all candidates who have run) have been to Democratic candidates. Since the start of 2007, Obama has received $7.9 million, with Clinton only about $800,000 behind. Should Obama continue to be this industry's financial favorite, it will become the first time since 1994 that the Democrats will have brought in more Wall Street donations than the Republicans. In the 2004 election cycle, President Bush collected nearly twice that of Democrat John Kerry from the securities and investment industry--$9.2 million compared to $4.8 million. This cycle, Republican candidate John McCain, who would likely be less tough on trade and regulation than Obama, still falls short with a mere $4.1 million. This is also behind what former Republican candidates Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney were given this election cycle.

Not to mention, Obama has recieved more money from Bain Capital than Romney during this election cycle, despite Obama's continued attacks.

Obama’s fundraising advantage is clear in the case of Bain Capital, the Boston-based private-equity firm that was co-founded by Romney, and where the Republican made his fortune. Not surprisingly, Romney has strong support at the firm, raking in $34,000 from 18 Bain employees, according to the analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

But Obama has outdone Romney on his own turf, collecting $76,600 from Bain Capital employees through September — and he needed only three donors to do it.

The Media Research Center recently caught up with a handful of National Organization for Women protestors to ask about their issues with Rush Limbaugh. Not surprisingly, when reporter Dan Joseph asked if MSNBC host Ed Schultz should also be kicked off the air or punished for his "hate" speech (he called conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham a slut a year ago), the women said no. Also, when Joseph was speaking directly to a protestor, the usual lefty organizer came over to squash the conversation and divert Joseph to an official spokesperson for the group.

Sick of NOW? Check out the Network of enlightened Women or NeW, headed by Karin Agness.

Speaking of enlightened women.

When President Obama spoke at the University of Notre Dame--a move that caused controversy because of his pro-abortion stance at a pro-life institution--one of his themes was open hearts and open minds, for "that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground."

Now, three years later, schools such as Notre Dame are unclear whether they fall under the Obama' administration's "religious employer" exemption for his contraceptive mandate, in part because they provide services to people who don't agree with them.

According to a document put out by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "The mandate does not exempt Catholic charities, schools, universities, or hospitals. These institutions are vital to the mission of the Church, but the Administration does not deem them 'religious employers' deserving conscience protection because they do not “serve primarily persons who share the[ir] religious tenets.' The Administration denies these organizations religious freedom precisely because their religiously motivated purpose is to serve the common good of society."

So in other words, be open-minded when it conveniences Obama to give a speech at a prestigious institution, but not when it comes to living out your religious beliefs of serving everyone regardless of their convictions.

No wonder this university is taking the case to court.

Let's just go over this one more time: Notre Dame, against many Catholics' better judgment, gives Obama a magnificent platform to spout his ideology. He, in turn, discusses serving others, regardless of whether they agree with you:

"This tradition of cooperation and understanding is one that I learned in my own life many years ago - also with the help of the Catholic Church.

I was not raised in a particularly religious household, but my mother instilled in me a sense of service and empathy that eventually led me to become a community organizer after I graduated college. A group of Catholic churches in Chicago helped fund an organization known as the Developing Communities Project, and we worked to lift up South Side neighborhoods that had been devastated when the local steel plant closed.

It was quite an eclectic crew. Catholic and Protestant churches. Jewish and African-American organizers. Working-class black and white and Hispanic residents. All of us with different experiences. All of us with different beliefs. But all of us learned to work side by side because all of us saw in these neighborhoods other human beings who needed our help - to find jobs and improve schools. We were bound together in the service of others.

And something else happened during the time I spent in those neighborhoods. Perhaps because the church folks I worked with were so welcoming and understanding; perhaps because they invited me to their services and sang with me from their hymnals; perhaps because I witnessed all of the good works their faith inspired them to perform, I found myself drawn - not just to work with the church, but to be in the church. It was through this service that I was brought to Christ.

At the time, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin was the Archbishop of Chicago. For those of you too young to have known him, he was a kind and good and wise man. A saintly man. I can still remember him speaking at one of the first organizing meetings I attended on the South Side. He stood as both a lighthouse and a crossroads - unafraid to speak his mind on moral issues ranging from poverty, AIDS, and abortion to the death penalty and nuclear war. And yet, he was congenial and gentle in his persuasion, always trying to bring people together; always trying to find common ground. Just before he died, a reporter asked Cardinal Bernardin about this approach to his ministry. And he said, "You can't really get on with preaching the Gospel until you've touched minds and hearts."

My heart and mind were touched by the words and deeds of the men and women I worked alongside with in Chicago. And I'd like to think that we touched the hearts and minds of the neighborhood families whose lives we helped change. For this, I believe, is our highest calling."

But today, your institution likely does not meet our religious employers' exemption because you provide services to those who don't agree with you.

Yesterday a number of Catholics filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration citing a violation of religious freedom thanks to the contraception mandate in ObamaCare. Now, a new poll shows that the vast majority of Americans believe religious freedom trumps ObamaCare, or in other words, the First Amendment of the Constitution trumps ObamaCare.

The Knights of Columbus, a social organization of Catholics, recently commissioned a nation-wide poll to gauge support for the Obama Administration's view. The poll, conducted by the respected Marist polling firm, interviewed 1,600 adults between May 10-14. In a shock result, 74% of adults said that freedom of religion should take precedence over government laws. A solid majority of adults all felt that religious providers should be able to opt out of providing abortions, contraceptives or sterilizations. The poll should send shudders through the Obama campaign.

This is a fight of the sore-loser Left's choosing, remember -- and it's one I've been begging them to pick since day one.  With Wisconsin's reckoning slated for two weeks from today, the recriminations among flustered Democrats are already flying:
 

The election has taken on significance beyond Wisconsin state politics: Organized labor sees the battle as a major stand against GOP efforts to scale back collective-bargaining rights for public-sector workers, as Mr. Walker did after taking office in 2011. Some Democrats now fear mobilizing Republicans to battle the recall could carry over to help the party—and Republican Mitt Romney—in November's presidential election...The Democratic National Committee and President Barack Obama's re-election campaign have emphasized their commitment to bolstering Mr. Barrett's campaign. They have offered help with volunteers and get-out-the-vote efforts, and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz plans to travel to Wisconsin for a fundraiser with Mr. Barrett. But the national party turned down Wisconsin Democrats' request for $500,000, one party official said. For the left-leaning groups that have spent months trying to oust Mr. Walker, a loss would be a deflating end to a process that began with unions and their allies gathering more than 900,000 signatures to force a recall.

Top Democrats now say that when labor groups first raised the specter of a recall, the party's officials urged their allies in Wisconsin to reconsider. "We told them it was a bad, bad, bad idea," one Democratic official said. A union official said both the Democratic National Committee and the Obama campaign expressed reservations. "I don't know that anyone was enthusiastic about it over there," the union official said. Party leaders also counseled against pouring money into a contested primary ahead of the recall election, the Democratic official said. Mr. Barca, the Wisconsin Assembly minority leader, said he had heard rumblings about the DNC's displeasure with the recall. But Wisconsin residents weren't seeking approval from Washington, he said.

If Walker prevails, the Democrats are pre-telegraphing their ready-made excuse: Money.
 

Democrats say they haven't come close to matching the $25 million that the Wisconsin governor has raised. Mr. Barrett entered the race late and faced a primary election, during which labor-backed groups spent more than $5 million supporting a candidate they preferred, only to see her lose. By a late April filing date, Mr. Barrett had raised $831,000. "It feels like David vs. Goliath on the money front," said Peter Barca, the Democratic leader in Wisconsin's State Assembly, who said he was optimistic nonetheless about his party's chances.

Hey, maybe you guys should have agreed on a consensus candidate, rather than squandering millions on a contested primary, prior to the do-over election that you demanded.  Your biggest problem isn't fundraising, Democrats; it's that a majority of Wisconsinites agree with Gov. Walker's reforms.  I know that's a bitter pill to swallow at the moment, but it's the truth.  Despite the governor's favorable poll position, Weekly Standard editor and Badger State native Stephen Hayes quotes Walker as cautioning Republicans against complacency as the big day draws near:
 

Speaking to volunteers that afternoon at a Walker “victory center” in Waukesha, the governor acknowledges the new polls and his impressive showing in the primary and offers his supporters a word of caution. “Do not let apathy be the thing that defeats us on June 5,” he says, urging the volunteers to keep up their efforts. “There are a lot of hardworking taxpayers in this state who for the past 15, 16 months have been sitting on their hands and saying, ‘You know, I don’t need a bullhorn, I don’t need a protest sign, I can let my words be heard in the election, at the ballot box.’ We just need to make sure that all those voices show up on June 5.”

...A Barrett victory would establish a dangerous precedent. If the Democrats succeed in recalling a governor on policy differences, not malfeasance, the Republicans will likely respond in kind. “That’s why the recalls are such a joke,” says Walker. “That’s why putting the mayor in would be so ridiculous. In the next 12 months are we going to go through the same thing all over again? If we win, the lieutenant governor wins, if the senators win—I’ve got to believe that effectively puts an end to recalls in this state. If we lose, it becomes recall ping-pong. Back-and-forth and back-and-forth.”

Hayes succinctly states why Barrett and the organized Left is struggling so mightily to shift public opinion against the incumbent:
 

By virtually every objective measure, Walker has been an extraordinarily successful governor. In just 16 months, the state has erased a $3.6 billion budget deficit, and according to figures released this month by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, it will have a $154.5 million surplus on June 30, 2013. Property taxes, which had risen by more than 40 percent since 1998, are down for the first time in years. The unemployment rate is down from 7.7 percent when Walker took office in January 2011 to 6.7 percent in April 2012. Last week, the state’s Department of Workforce Development released numbers showing that Wisconsin had gained some 23,000 jobs in 2011—correcting a misleading earlier report suggesting the state had lost more than 30,000 jobs over the same period. The subjective measures look good for Walker, too. On the stump, Walker is fond of citing Chief Executive magazine, which had ranked Wisconsin as the 41st-best state for business in 2010 and now ranks it 20th. Walker also points to a survey by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce that found only 10 percent of business owners thought the state was headed in the right direction in 2010, while an eye-popping 94 percent think so today.

Even the liberal Milwaukee Journal Sentinel realizes the recall push is completely unwarranted.  Faced with this cascade of good news, Wisconsin Democrats have resorted to a series of political misdirection gambits, all of which have fallen flat.  And as they are wont to do, they've also been lying.  Reason TV examined three of their most misleading claims against Walker:
 

It's crunch time in Wisconsin; the aftershocks of the June 5th election will reverberate across the country.  Let's close the deal.

Year after year it seems public university presidents are lobbying their state legislatures for even more taxpayer funding and it seems that every year, students protest rising tuition prices and budget cuts. But the Washington Post recently dug up the numbers in a new survey showing just how much public university presidents are making around the country and for some, it's nearly $2 million per year.  Priorities people. Is higher learning really about educating students anymore?

Texas A&M Chancellor Michael McKinney earned nearly as much, $1.97 million to Gee’s $1.99 million. Ousted Penn State President Graham Spanier earned $1.07 million.

Locally, the top-paid public chiefs were Charles Steger of Virginia Tech, at $738,603, and Alan Merten, the departing George Mason president, at $717,363. University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan earned $665,000, but that pay is listed as “partial-year”.

The annual Chronicle survey shows a rapid rise in top executive compensation in the public universities; last year’s survey had just one president, Gee, earning seven figures, and his total package was just $1.3 million. Governing boards are probably mindful of such milestones, just as they are mindful of being the first (or second, or third) institution to charge, say, $40,000 in private tuition.