While I strongly disagree with the law pushed through this week by the Wisconsin GOP to strip public sector unions of their collective bargaining rights, I think the political lesson that all politicians can take away from this event is that, whenever possible, you should act quickly and decisively.

If Gov. Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Republican senators were willing to use these hardball andlegally questionable tactics now, there is no reason they shouldn’t have been willing to use them three weeks ago when this fight first started. . . or even last week. I don’t think there is any doubt in people’s minds that, politically, the Wisconsin GOP would have been better off if they did this move the day the Senate Democrats fled, before they could become a national rallying point for labor.

I can only assume that Walker didn’t use this option on day one of the fight because he actually bought into the right-wing propaganda that regular people are angry at greedy teachers, and at first welcomed the stand-off because he thought it would make him look good. But after just the first week, it was clear the public had turned against the GOP in the fight. As we saw in the health care debate and almost every