Progressive Faith Renewed By Recall Vote

host.madison.com — It is the progressive movement that gave Wisconsinites the power to hold elected officials to account with the recall. Robert M. La Follette spent the better part of two decades campaigning to add the recall power to the constitution, and he did so for a reason. The progressives of a century ago placed their trust in the people of Wisconsin, extending to them a recall power sufficient to temper the excesses of the political careerists who would sell their state off to the highest bidder. On Tuesday, that trust will be tested. Big money can buy a lot in politics, and Walker has the biggest money this state has ever seen. But in the small towns and the valleys where the progressive movement was born, they are keeping the faith that Wisconsin is still a righteous state. That Wisconsin is still America’s north star, the laboratory of democracy that might yet redeem the republic.

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