Scott Walker more extreme than Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Medicaid Expansion.

I don't know about you, but everything Scott Walker does seems calculated and a little off kilter. On Medicaid expansion, he did it his way, leaving jobs and taxpayer savings behind because of the remote chance the federal share wouldn't be there...someday. Hmm, you could also hedge your bets Scott on federal disaster aid, federal defense contracts, federal share of highway funds...etc? Why do anything at all? Why not be that political deer-in-headlights?

The idea that a former health care CEO decided to take the expansion because it was a good deal, should tell you something about our carnival barking con man governor. He's an ideological purist, with grandiose visions a Walker nation filled with a tangled web of rules and regulations no one could fully understand. Here's Gov. Rick Scott's reasons for acting sensibly:

"While the federal government is committed to pay 100 percent of the cost, I cannot, in good conscience, deny Floridians the needed access to health care," Scott said at a hastily called news conference at the Governor's Mansion. Scott, a former hospital executive, spoke with unusual directness about helping the "poorest and weakest" Floridians — a stunning about-face.

Part of his self-described "new perspective" came from the death of his mother, Esther, last year, he said. "A few months ago, my mother passed away, and I lost one of the only constants in my life," Scott said. "Losing someone so close to you puts everything in new perspective . . . especially the big decisions."

Tea party activists bitterly criticized Scott's declaration. "This is just another example of Republicans lying to Floridians," said Everett Wilkinson of Palm Beach Gardens, calling Scott "the Benedict Arnold to the patriot and tea party movement in Florida."

Teabillies don't care too much about reality when they've got their guns and religion. Here's Ed Schultz on Gov. Rick Scott's reasoning that flies in the face of Walker's decision. Can they both be right?:

Cap Times: Florida Gov. Rick Scott's decision to expand Medicaid signals a possible reality check among some Republican governors, seven of whom now plan to buy into Obamacare.

Scott's reversal is notable because he vociferously led a legal fight against the Affordable Care Act and vowed not to implement it even after it was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Walker remains in the "hell-no" camp, along with sixteen other Republican governors who have turned away the federal money to expand Medicaid.

Walker says his move is intended to get people off the welfare wagon. Many of those — the ones making between 100 and 200 percent of poverty level — would be shoved into the new health insurance marketplace under Walker's plan. "I'd like to have fewer people in the state who are dependent on the government."

Nevertheless, Walker's getting hammered for turning away the federal dollars, which U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin says, in a letter to Walker Thursday, would have amounted to $1.1 billion by 2016, $1.3 billion in economic activity, and more than 10,500 news jobs. Over the next decade, Baldwin says, Wisconsin would have seen $10 billion from the feds. "At a time when Wisconsin needs leadership … you chose to turn away a job-creating federal investment in Wisconsin," Baldwin wrote in the letter.

And one health care policy analyst, a critic of Obamacare, called Walker's plan "crazy."

Here's Robert Craig from Citizen Action Wisconsin: