Salon's Joan Walsh breaks down Scott Walker's "everyman" hoax.

I couldn't resist recapping a few honest comments from Salon’s Joan Walsh:

This weekend we learned that Scott Walker hopes his “Everyman” shtick will obscure the fact that, in the words of Esquire’s Charlie Pierce, he was “hired by Koch Industries to manage their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin.” Also this weekend came the news that Walker’s administration admitted it had overbilled two Wisconsin family planning clinics by 93 percent – or at least $3.2 million. The move was so blatantly ideological that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel said the change “raised more questions than it answered.” Longtime Wisconsin progressive activist and blogger James Rowen compares Walker’s purported billing “mistake” to an episode earlier this year, in which he falsely blamed ugly changes to the state’s higher education mandate on a “drafting error” – when they were clearly ordered by his underlings.

This weekend also brought the news that the budget cuts to the University of Wisconsin system that were approved (after the language changes were reversed) will cost UW-Madison 400 jobs. That translates to 320 fewer courses offered in 2016-2017, and 9,000 students missing classes, likely resulting in students taking more time to get their degrees. 

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.