NY Sun: Palin invites union rank & file to join grassroots conservatives

The editors of the New York Sun observe that last night's crushing defeat of the public sector union bosses in the Wisconsin recall election could be a major turning point for the U.S. labor movement. A key figure in that potentially seminal moment, say the editors, is Gov. Sarah Palin, who stands ready with open arms to welcome the rank and file into the grassroots conservative movement:

Though we have disagreed with Big Labor on most public policy issues of the past generation, it happens that we don’t think of ourselves as anti-labor. We watched the central role that the AFL-CIO and other anti-communist labor unions played in the defeat of the Soviet Union. It was a huge thing. It led us to the conclusion that a free and democratic labor movement, invested in the riches that only human intelligence and work can create, is less a fifth column than a pillar of strength in a free society. But for the same reason that communism didn’t work, public sector unionism is a zero-sum game that pits labor against everyone else. It’s a fight that labor, like the communists, can only lose.

In this respect, Wisconsin can be a teaching moment. It puts at a premium politicians who, like Mr. Walker, have the grit for the fight. It also puts at a premium leaders with ability to reach out to labor and make this argument. This is one of the reasons we’ve been savoring the strategy of Sarah Palin, who stepped onto the national stage by announcing that her husband, Todd, was a “proud member of the United Steel workers” and who herself is a one-time union member from her days as a telephone company dispatcher. She is the only Republican who has pointedly reached out to labor and bid its rank and file to join the commonsense, conservative, constitutional cause.

We don’t mean to suggest this struggle is about Mrs. Palin, only that this is a moment to think about where the true interests of labor [lie] and about the possibilities of the labor movement.

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h/t: Jewish Americans for Palin

- JP