In the permanent campaign of today’s brass knuckle politics, it means a happy day for Republicans and a downbeat day for Democrats.

But even if you only care about winning the next heavyweight contest, Wisconsin is a poor guide to future performance in November.

No question, Scott Walker’s win is a personal triumph. But it hardly makes his signature policies a template for conservatives across the country. In fact, Walker lost his claim to be a Reaganesque model for governors the moment the recall went ahead.

How’s that? In Walker’s case, the result of the recall marks the end of his old style of governing: he almost certainly managed to lose control of the state senate, which means the days are over when he could railroad through highly partisan legislation.

That change was already telegraphed by the style of his recall campaign. He hardly campaigned as a union-buster. In fact, his issues list starts with the jobs recovery in Wisconsin (led by manufacturing), continues with education reform, and goes on to the healthcare safety net that is Medicaid.

Any conservative governor considering a similar path now knows they run the serious risk of confronting a determined and organized opposition that costs tens of millions of dollars to defeat. Even if you can raise that kind of money from the Koch brothers and other super-wealthy ideologues, you’re still going to turn yourself into a divisive figure in a way that imperils the rest of your agenda.

And to what end? Labor unions are indeed more powerful in the public sector than their private counterparts. But that isn’t saying very much. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership represents close to 12 per cent of all workers, compared to 20 per cent in 1983, two years after Reagan took on the air traffic controllers. The decline in union membership since the post-war period has been unstoppable.

Public sector unions represent a lopsided 37 per cent of workers compared to about 7 per cent in the private sector. So Walker’s battle with those unions is indeed targeted at the labor movement’s last remaining sector of relative strength.

But let’s be honest: the biggest threat to public sector unions isn’t Walker or the Koch brothers or even Karl Rove, in their Ahab-style quest for the Great White Whale of a permanent majority. It’s the prospect of several years of budget cuts that are thinning out the ranks of teachers, first responders and government functionaries across the country – and much of Europe too, for that matter.

Unions remain a vital part of the Democratic coalition, and a vital source of protection for workers. But Barack Obama could never have won in 2008 by leaning heavily on the unions alone. His coalition was far broader and needs to remain broad if he is to win re-election this year.

That in part helps to explain why the Obama campaign can also take some comfort from the recall results. When exit polls give your candidate a 7-point margin over Mitt Romney, including a lead on the central question of the economy, that comfort is no small consolation.

Wisconsin showed that GOP voters remain organized and enthusiastic about voting, even if some of that fire has died since 2010.

But they have a presidential candidate in November whose message hardly tracks with Walker’s issues list. Romney’s approach to manufacturing jobs is muddied by his desire for Detroit to go bankrupt. His approach to education is to cut – and possibly eliminate or merge – the department of education. And his approach to healthcare is to avoid any discussion of his signature achievement in Massachusetts.

Obama’s exit poll numbers in Wisconsin points to a broader trend: the rebound in manufacturing means the rust belt states and districts are not likely to be the battlegrounds that matter in November. If you want to find those, you have to drive a long way from union strongholds. States like Virginia and North Carolina, not Wisconsin and Michigan, will surely decide 2012 and the president’s fate.

Richard Wolffe is an MSNBC Political Analyst, beloved NOWist, and author of Renegade: The Making of a President

AP

It was one of the best smack-downs of his otherwise clunky campaign. Mitt Romney took Newt Gingrich’s beloved fantasy about building a lunar colony and dumped it in the large pile of loony Newtisms.

“I spent 25 years in business,” Romney told a bemused Gingrich at the GOP debate in Jacksonville, Florida, in January. “If I had a business executive come to me and say they wanted to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I’d say, ‘You’re fired.’”

Channeling his inner Donald Trump, this was the moment when the numbers-driven chief executive Romney displaced the pandering, fuzzy math candidate Romney.

So what would CEO Romney think of the candidate now campaigning in his name? What if the candidate walked up to the brains behind Bain and asked for some of their precious capital?

First, the private equity execs would not stand for the inflated numbers padding out Romney’s resume.

The former Massachusetts governor claims to have helped create 100,000 jobs at Bain, but that includes many years after he left the firm. Back when he was running to the left of Ted Kennedy for the Massachusetts Senate seat, Romney claimed in interviews and TV ads that he helped created just 10,000 jobs.

It’s strange that Romney likes to count jobs added after he left Bain because he does not take the same approach to job losses after he left the firm.

Talking to the right-wing talker and blogger Ed Morrissey this week, Romney said it was unfair to suggest that he was responsible for a steel factory that closed after his departure. “The problem, of course, is that the steel factory closed down two years after I left Bain Capital,” he said. “I was no longer there. So that’s hardly something that was done on my watch.”

Burnishing your legislative record might be standard in congressional races. Bike paths magically become “economic development.” Symbolic votes turn into historic battles for constituent groups.

But a tenfold exaggeration in your numbers would get you laughed out of the C-suite. Or possibly fired by someone like Mitt Romney.

Then there’s the small problem of the budget that doesn’t add up. At the core of any business plan is a spreadsheet proving how you’ll turn your brilliant idea of a lunar colony into a vastly profitable monopoly mining precious metals.

Romney’s big idea is that he can turn round the economy by cutting the deficit and government spending. So what does his spreadsheet show?

By his own admission, the spreadsheet has so few numbers in it, you can’t actually tell if it adds up. “I think it’s kind of interesting for the groups to try and score [the tax plan] because frankly it can’t be scored,” he told CNBC in March, “because those kinds of details will have to be worked out with Congress and we have a wide array of options.”

Hiding your numbers is not the best way to get investors or voters to trust you – or to prove your executive skills. Unless you’re a risk-management executive at JP Morgan Chase, the number-hiding strategy is generally unacceptable.

What we have seen of the numbers add up to this: a complete contradiction of Romney’s strategy.

It isn’t physically possible to cut the deficit while also cutting taxes and raising defense spending. And we’re not talking about small tax cuts or small hikes in the military budget, which already represent around one-fifth of federal spending. The United States already spends more on defense than the combined budgets of the next 20 military powers.

Romney would increase spending by another $2 trillion on defense over the next decade. His plan to cut taxes 20 per cent across the board, even beyond the Bush tax cuts, would add at least another $4 trillion to the deficit over ten years.

At this point, the private equity masters of the universe might just look at Romney’s record running other similar entities. Take the government of Massachusetts, for instance: a four-year period otherwise airbrushed out of the Romney campaign at this stage.

While managing the business known as the Commonwealth, Romney increased debt by $2.6 billion, with a jobs record that placed the state near the bottom of the nation.

Romney’s campaign says he’s a turnaround specialist. He could start by turning around his own nonsensical promises from the primaries. Drop the idea of cutting taxes beyond the Bush tax cuts and the notion of increasing the Pentagon budget. Don’t just attack the White House budget, write your own and reveal the numbers.

If you’re a turnaround CEO, campaign like one. Otherwise the voters might treat you like the board of Bain Capital.