While every Republican running for president leans toward authoritarianism, Scott Walker is hands down the most obvious sociopathic danger, and the media is noticing. Under his gentle, lazy-eyed demeanor, is a man that doesn't just defeat his political enemies, he eliminates them. Reporters are on this story. Alternet:
Whether waging war on his political enemies at home or fantasizing about attacking enemies abroad, Walker arguably is the most toxic authoritarian candidate in the Republican field. It’s insufficient to merely say that Walker likes to punish his enemies, or that he relishes sneak attacks, or that his career has been marked by the politics of fear, blame and divisiveness, and an inability to show restraint. All of these are true.
“I find [him] more Nixonian than even Richard Nixon himself (the authoritarian leader with whom I was, and am, so very familiar,” wrote ex-Nixon White House Counsel John Dean in April 2012 ... Today, three years later, Walker is parading around the campaign trail like an American dictator in waiting. He has a lengthy record on so many issues that reveal the same pattern: pick fights, launch sneak attacks, smear and scapegoat opponents, and then punish the defeated, according to Wisconsin media analysts. But he also has the personality of an aspiring American tyrant, as Dean noted.
He’d kill President Obama’s nuclear pact with Iran … Walker said he had no compunction about killing Iranians, saying he was ready to go to war with Iran on “day one” of his presidency … his latest political assassination target is the blandly named Government Accountability Board, a bipartisan panel of judges whose mission is keeping state elections fair and corruption-free … (regarding) the state’s Supreme Court, Walker’s benefactors had bankrolled successful high-court campaigns and had a sitting majority … days before Walker officially announced the Court not only ruled 4-2 that the corruption probe was out-of-bounds, it also rewrote the state’s campaign finance laws to allow the very collusion that was seen as illegal under the prior law.
He called for GAB’s head … to disband what is arguably the nation’s most reputable state election oversight board, and replace it with panel of political allies, mirroring his Supreme Court majority.
ALEC, which inspired many of Walker’s anti-labor efforts in Wisconsin, drew several hundred union protesters as legislators arrived for its conference. “I understand you had a few protesters yesterday,” Walke (said) “For us, that’s just getting warmed up. That’s nothing. We got 100,000 protesters.” Portraying the pro-union forces as violent thugs … “Those big government interests — they believe they can win by intimidating elected officials. There were amazing things they did to try to intimidate us. The good news is we didn’t back down.”
This is the essence of Walker’s appeal, and why he is so dangerous … his technique of scapegoating unions for the nation’s ills is no less demagogic … even though unions represent just 11 percent of the U.S. workforce and have been at a low ebb. This year, Walker likened the union protesters to the murderous Islamic State: “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world.” Before that, he described public-sector union members as the “haves” taking advantage of the “have-nots” — the taxpayers.
He denounced the protests against his efforts to undo the unions as “thuggery.” He described collective bargaining as a “corrupt system” and diagnosed union leaders as having a “sense of entitlement.” Walker this year signed anti-union right-to-work legislation. He has said he doesn’t think the minimum wage serves a purpose, and he has opposed prevailing-wage and living-wage requirements. ALEC official Leah Vukmir (R), a Wisconsin state senator, introduced him by talking about the “unhinged wrath of the forces” who opposed him and their “unprecedented vile behavior.”
Walker, describing the bargain shopping he does at Kohl’s department store, said he would do the same with taxes. It was a zany analogy. Kohl’s offers discounted merchandise for middle- and low-income consumers. The Laffer curve, the basis for supply-side economics, meant huge tax breaks for the rich that never trickled down.
But deception is the demagogue’s tool. Walker spoke Thursday about “the death threats not just against me and my family but against our lawmakers” … And some of Walker’s claims — including the alleged threat to “gut” his wife “like a deer” and of protesters “beating” and “rocking” a car he was in — could not be substantiated by independent authorities.
Such deception, however, is in the service only of the larger deceit at the core of his candidacy: By scapegoating toothless trade unions as powerful and malign interests, he enlists working people in his cause of aiding the rich and the strong.
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