Scott Walker—Rumors of Campaign Turmoil Amid Demise in Polls

Scott Walker's campaign chair, Rick Wiley, will be let go from the campaign because of top donor dissatisfaction with Walker's meltdown, and some donors are circulating an anonymous letter of condemnation alleging some unconfirmed misconduct on the part of Wiley, according to reports. (RedState) (Buzzfeed)

Wiley denies the reports on all counts (Opoien, The Capital Times).

Erick Erickson of RedState, a rightwing journal, runs a story on his site saying Wiley is on the way out, and "a lot more turmoil is on the horizon," and stands by his story.

Notes BuzzFeed:

The influential conservative talk radio host and blogger Erick Erickson appeared to allude to the whisper campaign [about Wiley] Thursday on Twitter: 'Lots of different people all sending me the same rumor about a particular campaign manager caught indecently at the Ohio debate.'

Sleazy way to treat a strategist and Walker loyalist whom Walker hired less than two months ago.

One wonders if Walker will stick up for Wiley and make a statement that any donors trash-talking Wiley can leave the campaign.

Scott Walker—Kill Anything Republicans Don't Control

Scott Walker turned civil service state positions into 37 new Walker political appointees just a month after declaring, "we're broke" in 2011 (Stein, Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

It was clear then, Walker was after power and nothing else.

Scott Walker's political set-up in 2011 was a fraud, claiming a deficit using budget numbers assuming every governmental agency gets a six-point increase. Never has happened and never will.

As then (now U.S. Rep.) State Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison) blew the whistle in 2011:

We found out [Feb. 13, 2011] after our briefing with the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB), the $3.6 billion deficit in the next budget that Governor Walker and the media has been repeating is a MANUFACTURED CRISIS. The number is based on $3.9 billion in new spending requests by agencies, a 6.2% increase. I don’t think there is a member in the legislature that would vote for that. In fact, I asked LFB Director Lang when was the last time we gave agencies exactly what they requested and was told he couldn’t think of one and he’s been here decades.

Independent agencies like the Fiscal Bureau work to keep politicians honest, ideally to inform.

Walker and Republicans had to misrepresent LFB budget numbers and make believe Walker's attempt to injure working families was a fiscal and not a political move, a technique Republicans employ today.

Occasionally Republicans get caught in their lies.

So, Walker and Republicans are targeting independent watchdog agencies, while blowing a budgetary deficit for the next governor to fix.

Nationally, House Republicans adopted a rule in January 2015 to invent budget numbers and imaginary revenue forecasts used by the Congressional Office Bureau, codifying Voodoo Economics (Weisman, New York Times).

Our friend, Charles P. Pierce, has the story at Esquire on Scott Walker's latest exercise in corruption.

Writes Pierce on Walker's attempt to eliminate the Legislative Audit Bureau and Government Accountability Board:

In other words, the problem with independent watchdogs is that they are independent. Far better to put the oversight function under the control of the hacks you've installed in the state agencies. This is especially egregious in this case because Scott Walker never has held a political office that he has not so deformed by his political ambitions that people actually went to jail over it. This is a singularly corrupt man, even by the standards of the our new era of decriminalized influence peddling. He never has run a campaign in his life that wasn't shot through with penny-ante grifting. There is no reason to believe this one is any different. It is an extended exercise in consumer fraud.

Fraud and lies define Scott Walker.