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The NYT strains to find a "victory" for the Wisconsin demonstrators.

Its story today begins:

In a victory ? at least a symbolic one ? for Wisconsin?s public employee unions, the Capitol authorities announced on Sunday that demonstrators could continue their all-night sleepovers in the building and would not be forcibly ejected or arrested.

Well, yes. A decision was made that it wasn't worth the drama to oust these people who've been clean and orderly enough. Plus, the police are ? it seems to me ? sympathetic to the protest. As for the GOP politicians who dominate the state government: Why would they want to make martyrs out of the folks who've worked so long and hard to demonstrate how strongly they care? They've been hanging out in the Capitol, enduring the cacophony of their own drumming and chanting and sleeping on the hard stone floor for 10+ days. They're punishing themselves. Why not let them suffer, unmolested, and continue to generate images that disturb the Wisconsinites who voted the Republicans into office 3 months ago?

Full post as published by Althouse on February 28, 2011 (boomark / email).