Scott Walker wants the National Guard to work as Union-Busters

I'm absolutely flabbergasted:

In an interview with the Associated Press, Scott Walker proposed stripping nearly all government workers of their collective bargaining rights. And as a warning shot across the bow, he told Wisconsin reporters Friday that he's alerted the National Guard ahead of any unrest, or in the event that state services are interrupted.

This is the stupidest statement I think I've ever heard come from a sitting Governor of this state.

The optics are just horrible. Not only does it harken back to the union-busting days of the early 20th century, but to do it with the National Guard sounds downright dictatorial.

This is something that has the potential to turn Walker into a national laughing stock and earn him denunciations from every corner of the state. This isn't a bargaining tactic: it's intimidation and the calling card of someone who has no interest in negotiating with good faith.

Walker has just handed public unions a PR gift. Walker is basically equating locking public employees out of work with integrating southern schools a generation ago. Walker is doing more to undermine public safety by threatening to deploy the National Guard unnecessarily than any kind of action by public employee union could possibly be considering.

The press should demand that Walker produce evidence that civil unrest is imminent for him to so recklessly use his authority to put the NG on alert.

MORE: E.D. Kain puts the situation's potential rather succinctly:

This new class war is bound to end in tears. Indeed, in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is planning to send in the National Guard if public employees resist his efforts to end their collective bargaining rights. Class warfare, meet actual warfare.