The Truth about Scott Walker's Cowardice and Deceptions!

Esquire columnist Charles Pierce writes the way I think every reporter should, in that they should be calling a lie...a lie.  How novel. The endless stream of political nonsense we’re getting now would not exist if we had only held candidates to one simple standard; don’t lie.

Let's look at Scott Walker's deceptions and rank cowardice through the eye's of Charlie Pierce, truth teller.

Deception: This is real reporting, from the best Scott Walker critic out there. Think about it; when it's the truth vs the Republican agenda, how could it not sound partisan? 

Pierce: "Consider, for example, today's piece in Tiger Beat On The Potomac, in which is discussed the early days of the campaign of Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. What he says on a number of important issues -- labor rights, women's rights, the environment -- while he is running for an office has little or nothing to do with what he actually does after being elected. The man is an unprincipled scoundrel.

He's used to wrapping his policies in a soft blanket of moderate rhetoric that can leave room for interpretation. When he sought re-election in 2014, Walker didn't brag about his efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. Nor did he mention his opposition to abortion in all cases, including rape and incest. Instead, after signing a bill with a provision that would likely have shuttered a Wisconsin abortion clinic had the courts not tossed it, Walker ran an ad where he declared "there's no doubt in my mind the decision of whether or not to end a pregnancy is an agonizing one." And he said the bill leaves the final decision on abortion "to a woman and her doctor."

This would be what many of us would call a "lie."

It was textbook Walker. But the language of the ad also underscores one of the factors Wisconsin insiders believe has contributed to Walker's early struggles on the national campaign trail—his tendency to create his own reality. First of all, this "problem" is not going to mean fk-all to the Republican base, because the Republican base is filled with crazoids, Bible-bangers, and people with short-wave radios for brains. All they know is that Walker knuckled all the people of whom The Base is terrified.

Piece wasn't done:

He's a half-bright messianic fraud with the political instincts of a wolverine and the integrity of a gaboon viper … you can already see forming the notion that Walker's fundamental mendacity can be washed in the blood of the Lamb and repurposed as a clever campaign strategy.

Scott Walker's Cowardice Exposed: This goes out to Brian, who asked me why no ones pointed out how Walker hid from the protesters at the Capitol, and then the public during his statewide private appearances, the opposite of being "Unintimidated." Pierce explains:

It is not an idle observation to note that Scott Walker was not at his house when the loud people showed up … keep in mind Scott Walker's entire campaign is going to be based, not on his achievements as governor, because there are none, but on his reputed "courage" in taking on the angry mobs of English teachers back in 2011 and 2012.

There are a number of things to remember when he trots this fairy tale out a couple of gozillion times … At the time of the Wisconsin protests of 2011 , Walker was not half as brave as he is today while sitting in the various green rooms. Most of the time, he hid in his office, or among friendly audiences, or behind the Capitol Police force that he and his pet legislature empowered to restrict in entirely new ways the free speech rights that existed within the capitol building in Madison. People were busted in the capitol for singing (see above), for holding signs, and for reading books in the legislative galleries. 

At the height of the protests in 2011, Walker rescheduled the annual lighting of the state Christmas tree from noon, when the capitol is busiest, to 8:30 in the morning. To cover his cowardly maneuver, he invited World War II veterans to watch, so he could hide behind them, too.

They were his constituents, singing in the Capitol rotunda. They were his constituents, petitioning their government with their grievances. He could have met with them, or some of them, or any of them. He was their governor, too, at least in theory. Instead, Scott Walker hid in his office, hid with the deep pockets of his political puppet masters, changed the rules so he could hide behind his personal police force, hid this very week behind his aging grandparents and in the soft confines of Fox News, and is now pitching a book about how "Unintimidated" he was, the essential mythology on which he is out there now running for president. You should clip and save this, because, apparently, we are terrified by this man, who never saw a lifeboat from which he wouldn't throw a child to save himself.

I found this comment on the WSJ story "Walker Strikes Hawkish Tone" to be right on:

The little weasel who hid in the tunnel between the Capitol and the parking garage for most of the Wisconsin Uprising is now "hawkish"? The uneducated career politician who lacked the ability to negotiate with a teachers' union is now an expert in multinational nuclear talks in the Middle East? The "fiscal conservative" who has given Wisconsin a projected two year budget deficit of $2 billion has now declared he has created a budget "surplus"? Why is anyone paying attention to Walker? $$