Scott Walker's Campaign Is Faltering, Policy Lightweight Is Scaring GOP

Scott Walker

There is an unspoken rule in Scott Walker's campaign and gubernatorial office: No town hall-style events where Walker has to answer unscripted questions and think on his feet.

Like the iconic feather by Garry Trudeau savaging former Vice President Dan Quayle (1989-1993), Scott Walker's brand as a lightweight is penetrating the nation just one month after Walker declared his candidacy for the presidency.

Bake in the fact that Scott Walker's criminal scheme illegally coordinating fundraising is on track in the federal court system, Walker's incredible destruction of his own home state, and you have a fatally wounded candidate, [no matter how much dark money the Koch brothers and other billionaires dump into the electoral system].

Scott Walker's retort: Using a tweet to appeal to the Iowa GOP Caucus crowd amid falling poll numbers: 'Hillary Clinton has liberal, academic friends!'

On that point, Walker is right. Hillary does have well-educated, successful and socially conscious friends, and they worked their butts off to their parents' delight and pride.

But this does not sit well with the radical evangelical Scott Walker who feels academic and professional attainment are elitist defects to be avoided, hence, Walker's perverse efforts to wage war on the University of Wisconsin System.

After Walker's candidacy collapses from sheer lack of policy knowledge and intellect, rightwing welfare and unspent campaign funds await.

Wisconsin Under Walker Careened to Worst State in Household Income Decline

Update: Prediction markets judge Scott Walker biggest loser of Fox News date (New York Times). As Juan Cole writes of Walker's foreign policy responses: "After W., I have a rule that if you flounder around speaking some odd Klingon form of English and don’t seem actually to, like, know anything, you can’t be president."
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Coming off a debate performance in which Scott Walker shocked analysts by showing a pedestrian grasp on major issues including foreign policy and jobs, news from last spring that Wisconsin under Scott Walker has plunged to worst in Household Income Decline went unmentioned.

This is of course to be expected from a campaign now billing itself as "grassroots."

Like Scott Walker or not, it is objectively clear that this toxic ideologue is a lightweight and a vindictive liar, not a serious man as judged by command of facts and evidence, rather a flunkie to billionaires in a position to inflict a lot more damage onto Wisconsin.

This description of Walker is not advanced in most political coverage of what Walker in particular and the Republican Party have become.

As Paul Krugman notes this week: "It has long been obvious that the conventions of political reporting and political commentary make it almost impossible to say the obvious — namely, that one of our two major parties has gone off the deep end. ... Or to put it another way, modern Republican politicians can’t be serious — not if they want to win primaries and have any future within the party. Crank economics, crank science, crank foreign policy are all necessary parts of a candidate’s resume." (New York Times)

To the extent the clown car is not so described, the United States is at risk in many spheres of public policy and the most vulnerable of our fellows will get hit first.

Scott Walker Retreats on Jobs Pledge in National Debate

Scott Walker's 2010 campaign promise to create 250,000 new private sector jobs in his first term was broken after Walker repeated the pledge, before scrubbing the jobs promise off his campaign website in 2013.

"It’s a commitment I made in 2010 and it’s a commitment I make today," Walker said at the 2012 Wisconsin GOP convention (Mal Contends) (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Last night, Walker was asked about his broken jobs promise and Walker said his promise was simply the result of a governor who "aimed high"—a qualification never used in his campaigns. (Gilbert, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) (Wisconsin State Journal omits coverage of jobs question in debate coverage).

No promise, no commitment, no accountability, Walker apparently wants America to believe any promise he makes is subject to revision in light of Walker's unmentioned future assurances that he aimed high.

Would a mortgage company accept this explanation for a broken commitment?

How about a judge who received assurances from a convicted defendant for a deferred sentence?
- Well, judge we reached that agreement because I aimed high.

Perhaps American jurists will revise Contract Law in which a new element of a binding agreement is an undisclosed intention to aim high.

The national audience introduced to Walker last night could not see the following truisms in the constrained debate format, but with Scott Walker two rules apply:

• Nothing Walker promises should be believed
• Most of what Walker will do in office will not be discussed in public

From a Time Magazine transcript of the Fox News debate last night in Cleveland:

CHRIS WALLACE: Governor Walker.

(APPLAUSE) Governor Walker, when you ran for governor of Wisconsin back in 2010, you promised that you would create 250,000 jobs in your first term, first four years. In fact, Wisconsin added barely half that and ranked 35th in the country in job growth. Now you’re running for president, and you’re promising an economic plan in which everyone will earn a piece of the American dream.

Given your record in Wisconsin, why should voters believe you?

SCOTT WALKER: Well, the voters in Wisconsin elected me last year for the third time because they wanted someone who aimed high, not aimed low.

Before I came in, the unemployment rate was over eight percent. It’s now down to 4.6 percent. We’ve more than made up for the jobs that were lost during the recession. And the rate in which people are working is almost five points higher than it is nationally.

You know, people like Hillary Clinton think you grow the economy by growing Washington. One report last year showed that six of the top 10 wealthiest counties in America were in or around Washington, D.C.. I think most of us in America understand that people, not the government creates jobs. And one of the best things we can do is get the government out of the way, repeal Obamacare, put in — reign in all the out of control regulations, put in place and all of the above energy policy, give people the education, the skills that the need to succeed, and lower the tax rate and reform the tax code. That’s what I’ll do as president, just like I did in Wisconsin.

Scott Walker's Appetite for Money Leaves Wisconsin Behind

Wisconsin people stand together against the reckless, absent Gov.
Scott Walker. Walker's political "Dept of All" crafted a budget coming
from out of nowhere, maybe the visions of Walker. Walker says
God and his Church put him in this position for a run for president
and that he prays on every major political decision, including
his budget proposal. Jobs and honest work apparently are not
high on Scott Walker's list of thing to pray for.
"They ... smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back
into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever
it was that kept them together, and let other people
clean up the mess they had made."
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Jobs, jobs, whatever happened to Scott Walker's 250,000 new jobs promise? A floor, not a ceiling, yes?

No.

Scott Walker proves jobs no longer matter. Neither do promises.

Scott Walker is plundering Wisconsin for his perceived self interests.

As Walker jets across the nation, Wisconsin residents are left behind, bringing up the rear in job creation and becoming the unwilling recipient of a Walker budget proposal, eviscerating the DNR, public education and the University of Wisconsin System. Crazy.

Walker didn't run on these ruinous measures. Even right-leaning newspapers and residents who have protected Walker in the past are wondering where Walker's budget of destruction is coming from. So, increasingly is business (Torinus, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

So, Walker feels entitled to launch his shock-and-awe fire sale of Wisconsin to the special interests, funding his quasi-presidential campaign at the expense of small farmers, working families and the centers of rural communities called rural school districts.

All the while Walker takes the money to fund his project selling himself as a regular Wisconsinite and not a ideological zealot who doesn't know much about public policy.

"One hiccup in Walker selling himself as a regular guy is that regular guys don't have rope lines to keep reporters at a distance. During three public events on Thursday and Friday, he never was within earshot of national reporters following him. ... As Walker crisscrossed South Carolina, he never took questions in public from prospective voters, either. There were no town-hall style events, and when he met one-on-one with voters the media were kept from that room," notes John McCormick in Bloomberg.

That Walker speaks earnestly about making his political decisions after consultations from God is troubling, that Walker was caught on tape taking his orders from billionaires is disturbing.

But whatever happened to Walker's focus on jobs?

God must have told Walker to avoid question-and-answer sessions and questions about jobs as well because the few softball interview questions Walker entertains reveal a shallow and deceitful man.

The fact is Scott Walker is a pathological liar without a conscience, Walker is even targeting the disabled again.

I guess this utter lack of empathy for everyday people is God's will, if Scott Walker is to be believed.

Scott Walker v. Mary Burke—Forfeited by Ms. Burke and the Loser Is Wisconsin

Horse Latitudes - Wisconsin,
you're the horses

Update: Really hate to write I told you so, Scott Walker: 52.26%; Mary Burke 46.59%. (Wisconsin GAB) Difficult to win when the campaign communications team is inept, the state party is run by jokers with no message or clue, and as late as May 2014, fully half the Wisconsin electorate said "they either haven’t heard enough about [Burke] or don’t know if they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of her." - (Marquette Law School Poll) Great communications, team!

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Mary Burke has the same chance of being elected governor of Wisconsin as Scott Walker does of becoming the next president of the United States.

I wish to thank Ms. Burke for sticking Wisconsin with Scott Walker for another four years; appreciate this, extraordinary work from the campaign that can't shoot straight.

As anti-citizen bill after anti-citizen bill wafts from the GOP-dominated Wisconsin legislature, Mary Burke decided the prudent communications strategy to employ is that used by Sen. Michael Ellis (R-Neenah), Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and Scott Walker: Go dark, be silent and hope no one notices.

Brilliant. I had never even considered doing nothing as a winning game plan.

Yet, the reasoning behind the Burke campaign's lack of action appears unsound.

Of course, there is an opposing view on campaign communications.

For example, when Republicans and only Republicans attack voting (Senate Bill 324) a candidate could actually point this out, repeatedly.

[Note to Sen. Kathleen Vinehout (D-Alma), there is still time to get on the ballot for governor, if only to light the equivalent of a white phosphorus grenade under the Burke campaign's collective ass. (This is a metaphor—met·a·phor [ méttə fàwr ]—for the benefit of the Burke communications team.]

Another example of Republican chicanery of the most foul, that surely penetrated the brains in the Burke campaign are Senate Bill 300 and Senate Bill 13.

SB 300 helps cancer victims and their families get affordable chemo treatments and is being blocked in the Senate by Republicans after being unanimously passed by the Senate Committee on Insurance and Housing in late January.

Silence emanates from the Burke campaign on SB 300 though likely not because Scott Walker and Republicans get loads of money from the health insurance, finance and real estate industry.

Nationally, this anti-democratic sector gave $129,843,765 to federal candidates since 1990, and is trending Republican fast. Walker's take from the insurance industry and finance sector is well into the $ millions.

Burke's reasoning here is unclear.

Then there's Senate Bill 13 (Senate Substitute Amendment SA1-AB19) that blocks veterans, veterans!, and other cancer victims suffering from Mesothelioma.

Senate Bill 13 passed without comment from Burke.

The thing with cancer survivors and the people who die from it is that cancer—Mesothelioma, Leukemia and too many to list—this condition, this trauma, is what high-priced political consultants and political scientists refer to as: Really bad.

Comforting and pitching in to help a family member or friend dying from cancer is the type of experience that resonates with people, as would the unbelievably callous actions of Republicans and the health insurance industry, if so noted.

Check with your political consultants on this one, Ms. Burke; nevermind, I guess that time has passed.