Tea Party deniers look darn silly

"The Tea Party will disappear when the economy gets better, and the economy's getting better all the time."

- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

More's the pity popular "Family Feud" host Richard Dawson moved on to curtain No. 3 in the Big Game Show In The Sky. It would have been priceless to see him spoof the lords of the Democrat Party in the wake of last week's voter uprisings in Wisconsin and California.

Imagine Dawson taking Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., by the hand after the Tea Party kicked the big, fat arse of Big Labor in the unions' drive to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Standing before the studio audience with a twinkle in his eye and a devilish half-smile on his lips, Dawson might say:

Show me ... "The Tea Party will disappear ..."

Ehhhhh! goes the buzzer. Survey says - and this should be a key takeaway from last week's elections - that the Tea Party remains a powerful grass-roots movement capable of holding hands with traditional Republican interests to best status-quo Democrats and moneyed unions, even in labor friendly states such as Wisconsin.

As much as Tea Party deniers like Reid wish it were not so, when the Tea Party embraces issues in its wheelhouse - wasteful government, deficit spending and out-of-control public employee unions - it's a formidable force that resonates with average Americans on the left, right and the middle.

There's no better example than Wisconsin.

Walker, a Republican, took office in January 2011 and became a lightning rod for unions when he proposed a bill to, as he put it, "repair" the Wisconsin state budget. One of the provisions, which eventually passed and became law, changed the collective bargaining process for most public employees.

That set off alarm bells for unions everywhere. If they can do that in Wisconsin, why can't they do that in any other state suffering budget emergencies?

So unions made Gov. Walker public enemy No. 1 and garnered the signatures for a recall.

It became a must-win for Democrats because, as Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., said on the eve of the recall election: "It will embolden other Tea Party types to continue the work that he's (Walker) already started. ... That's why we are doubling down on our resolve to beat back this national Tea Party effort."

It could not have turned out worse for Democrats.

Despite an onslaught of union pressure to get out the vote and polls that showed the race going down to the wire, come Election Day the message of Gov. Walker and the "Tea Party types" won - and won big.

And it wasn't the only election that night.

In California, the cities of San Diego and San Jose voted overwhelmingly to trim runaway pension benefits for city workers - and not just for future hires, but also for current city workers.

Shocked unions vowed to block the votes in court. It is California, after all. But between voters in Wisconsin, San Diego and San Jose, the writing is on the wall for status quo Democrats, who for years feathered their political beds by funneling taxpayer money to big unions.

Unreasonable spending must stop. Public employee union contracts, which give public servants pay, benefits and retirement benefits at levels unheard of in the private sector, must end.

It doesn't have to be Draconian, if states and cities act now.

But what city or state in this economy (which is now headed into a double-dip recession) can afford 50-year-olds retiring at 80, 90 and 100 percent of their government pay?

Reuters put its finger on last week's events in an interview with Gary Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

"This is a watershed moment, a historic moment," he said. "They (unions) gambled heavily and they lost heavily."

And they lost (Sen. Reid, please close your eyes) to that disappearing Tea Party.

Sherman Frederick, former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal and member of the Nevada Newspaper Hall of Fame, writes a column for Stephens Media. Read his blog at www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm.