Saturday, February 28, 2015

Walker gets media cover for ISIS=Wisconsin Protesters comparison, but only briefly.

John Dickerson, Slate's chief political correspondent, took the word of Scott Walker’s campaign spinners, and threw up another media wall of protection for our Teflon governor.
Walker said he was taken out of context, and he was. This is reductionist and it’s a logical fallacy, but it’s not a comparison. The logical fallacy is that strength in one category can be transferred to another. Walker was arguing that since he had done one hard thing, he could offer the same internal strength to do another hard thing. 
Yikes, just when we thought everybody else and Gov. Rick Perry finally got it right, the media offered Walker a way out.

Not so Fast: But thanks to University of Wisconsin’s own Joan Walsh, at Salon, the media appeasers got it wrong again:
It turns out CPAC wasn’t the first time Walker has tried his “standing up to unions means I can whip ISIS” line. He made a similar argument at the New York event where Rudy Giuliani upstaged him by claiming President Obama doesn’t love America. 

According to Larry Kudlow, an event co-sponsor:
"Walker argued that when Reagan fired the PATCO air-traffic controllers over their illegal strike, he was sending a message of toughness to Democrats and unions at home as well as our Soviet enemies abroad. Similarly, Walker believes his stance against unions in Wisconsin would be a signal of toughness to Islamic jihadists and Russia’s Vladimir Putin."
If Kudlow is correct, that undermines Walker’s claim that he was merely citing the protests as an example of a “difficult situation” he’s faced. He thinks somehow ISIS in Iraq and Syria will be cowed by his battles on the steps of the Capitol in Madison.

Walker is already complaining that this is another “gotcha” moment . As Digby reminds us, the Urban Dictionary aptly defines a “gotcha” question as one Sarah Palin is too dumb to answer. Claiming fighting protesters prepared you to fight ISIS when asked about fighting terror? That’s an answer even Palin might have been too smart to give.

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