Yesterday, I argued that Walker may have the right stuff to please both the Tea Party fringe of the GOP and the sensible business center.
"Both stripes of Republican voters will likely take Walker’s shruggie act as an indication that he secretly views things the way they do. For the rightwing ideologues, hearing Walker punt on issues like ISIS or whether or not Obama is a secret Muslim feeds right into their paranoid narratives about how the evil liberal media is suppressing rightwing truths. “He secretly agrees with us,” the narrative goes, “but he can’t say so out loud without being crucified by the liberal media.”
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/02/could-scott-walker-be-this-years.html
The shruggie also gives him plausible deniability with the general electorate. So maybe he's crazy like a fox.
Nevertheless, the narrative that he's a centrist who reached over party lines to get elected in Wisconsin is the Great Illusion among the national media about Walker. He's a relentless partisan. Wisconsin is basically too states-one very blue one very red-rather than a one state full of people in the Center.
"Put simply, Walker has risen to power in Wisconsin in something of a conservative bubble, where there is more emphasis on doctrinal consistency and energizing the base than on engaging the opposition. So it should not be surprising that Walker would punt on a question about evolution, as he did recently in England, or that he would see no need to distance himself from Giuliani’s comment, unlike other 2016 aspirants from another swing state, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio. In Walker’s world, it matters more not to be seen as squishy than to worry about saying something that could ruffle liberal feathers. Heck, ruffling liberal feathers is what wins in the WOW counties and on the shows they listen to. “If he says something stupid ... he can run to the outlets and they’ll take care of it,” Christopher Terry, a former employee of one of the talk shows told me last year. “He could eat a child on television and [Milwaukee talk radio] would go on about how it benefits children.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/scott_walker_has_always_played_to_his_political_base_the_wisconsin_governor.html
The sad thing is nothing we know about Walker suggests he's incapable of doing just that. In a way, maybe Democrats shouldn't be upset if he were to steal the GOP nomination as he's way too rough around the edges to not scare off the general electorate. Again, here's a guy who wants to be the Leader of the Free World and yet won't go on the record as supporting evolution.
"Both stripes of Republican voters will likely take Walker’s shruggie act as an indication that he secretly views things the way they do. For the rightwing ideologues, hearing Walker punt on issues like ISIS or whether or not Obama is a secret Muslim feeds right into their paranoid narratives about how the evil liberal media is suppressing rightwing truths. “He secretly agrees with us,” the narrative goes, “but he can’t say so out loud without being crucified by the liberal media.”
"For those Republicans who don’t actually buy the birther narratives about Obama or who don’t reject the theory of evolution, however, the signal sent by Walker’s dunno posturing is a little different. To them, it’s: “He’s not an imbecile, but he has to play to the rubes in order to win Iowa.”
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/02/could-scott-walker-be-this-years.html
The shruggie also gives him plausible deniability with the general electorate. So maybe he's crazy like a fox.
Nevertheless, the narrative that he's a centrist who reached over party lines to get elected in Wisconsin is the Great Illusion among the national media about Walker. He's a relentless partisan. Wisconsin is basically too states-one very blue one very red-rather than a one state full of people in the Center.
"Put simply, Walker has risen to power in Wisconsin in something of a conservative bubble, where there is more emphasis on doctrinal consistency and energizing the base than on engaging the opposition. So it should not be surprising that Walker would punt on a question about evolution, as he did recently in England, or that he would see no need to distance himself from Giuliani’s comment, unlike other 2016 aspirants from another swing state, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio. In Walker’s world, it matters more not to be seen as squishy than to worry about saying something that could ruffle liberal feathers. Heck, ruffling liberal feathers is what wins in the WOW counties and on the shows they listen to. “If he says something stupid ... he can run to the outlets and they’ll take care of it,” Christopher Terry, a former employee of one of the talk shows told me last year. “He could eat a child on television and [Milwaukee talk radio] would go on about how it benefits children.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/02/scott_walker_has_always_played_to_his_political_base_the_wisconsin_governor.html
The sad thing is nothing we know about Walker suggests he's incapable of doing just that. In a way, maybe Democrats shouldn't be upset if he were to steal the GOP nomination as he's way too rough around the edges to not scare off the general electorate. Again, here's a guy who wants to be the Leader of the Free World and yet won't go on the record as supporting evolution.
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