Wisc. Union-Fighting Gov. Portrayed as Egyptian Dictator

The Egypt connections, or comparisons, are growing in Wisconsin.

As Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker fights the unions over a budget proposal that would essentially eliminate state workers' collective bargaining ability, some, including the media, are taking the opportunity to compare him to former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. That comes as Glenn Beck pointed out yesterday how some progressives are trying use Egyptian unrest as a rallying cry in America.

One website, called Minimubarak.com, goes as far as to portray Walker as "mini-mubarak:"

Below the site's picture, visitors can click on an Austin Powers clip that features Dr. Evil saying, "Scotty don't." The site's affiliation is unclear.

Even the media is jumping on the Walker-is-Mubarak bandwagon. In Wednesday's Washington Post, op-ed columnist Harold Meyerson made a similar comparison.

"It's a throwback to 19th-century America, when strikes were suppressed by force of arms," Meyerson writes. "Or, come to think of it, to Mubarak's Egypt or communist Poland and East Germany."

In his concluding sentence, Meyerson uses the news that Walker briefed the state's National Guard on potential unrest to make the comparison again:

Now that Wisconsin's governor has given the Guard its marching orders, we can discern a new pattern of global repressive solidarity emerging - from the chastened pharaoh of the Middle East to the cheesehead pharaoh of the Middle West.

The danger may be this: if Walker is like a dictator, and rising up against a dictator is good and has been recently praised in Egypt, might these portrayals legitimize rising up against Walker?