Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said voters have been given "poor choices" for president ...
"It's just sad in America that we have such poor choices right now."
Walker ... dropped his own White House bid last September.
"[Trump] is not yet the nominee. Officially that won't happen until the middle of July and so for me that's kind of the time frame. In particular I want to make sure that he renounces what he says, at least in regards to this judge."
Walker had previously said he would back the Republican nominee, "whoever that is."
Even a wildly racist maniac? Even funnier, the last part of his comment above had a hidden meaning only crazy conservative media could notice. WKOW's Greg Neumann noticed this tweet:
Rumors are starting to float around that Scott Walker is open to accepting the nomination at the convention, if the wheels continue to come off the Trump train and the rules are changed to unbind the delegate. "He's not the nominee yet" really can only mean one possible thing: Walker is among the people who are at least entertaining the possibility that something might happen to prevent Trump from becoming the nominee in July.
Now that the public and press have finally picked up on Trump's right wing authoritarianism, I thought it would be a good to take a look again at Wisconsin's own authoritarian despot; Scott Walker. Walker's presidential spilled over with scary gems like this:
Reuters-Scott Walker on Iran: "This is
not a country we should be doing business with ...The United States needs a foreign
policy that putssteel in the face of our
enemies." "We don’t need more information,we don’t need to waitto confirm the next Secretary of
State,we need decisive
leadership and we need it now. This won’t be easy, butwhen America leads, and has a
strong president with clear priorities whobelieves
in American strength, the rest of the world will follow."
Walker's ambitious campaign agenda was peppered with outright authoritarian edicts that somehow got lost in the coverage. Like the following frightening plan to break the country up into little fiefdoms.
Walker to spin off states, dissolve "United" States, saying it's too big to fail!!!
Like another poisonous snake we're all familiar with, Scott Walker is rattling, and he's about to strike. So you've got to ask; shouldn't we do something?
In a just released interview with right wing spinmeister Breitbart, Walker doesn't acknowledge the existence of an opposition party. He doesn't care if most Americans disagree with what he has planned for popular government programs polling says people support overwhelmingly.
Carrying out the rest of his divide and conquer agenda, he would separate the states into miniature country-like entities, with their own transportation, infrastructure, workforce, and environmental laws. And he wants a tough punishment base system of social safety nets that would make anyone down on their luck wish they were never born:
Walker said that if he’s elected president in 2016, he’d aim to severely cut back on the size and scope of the federal government—and he touted his experience battling the unions in Wisconsin. “For me, what I learned from what we did four years ago in Wisconsin, is you got to strike early” ... I’d like to take huge chunks of the federal government and send it back to the states. For years people have talked about Medicaid—that’s a good start, to block grant that. But I’d take major social service programs, I’d take transportation and infrastructure, workforce and development, environmental protection, and heck I’d take education and instead of spending each of those down from Washington where the federal government skims off huge chunks of money and sends pennies on the dollar back to the state governments, why not keep those dollars back in the states where states can be more effective, more efficient, and certainly be held accountable to the hardworking taxpayers?
It's hard to be accountable under a one party system, you think?
Right now, at the federal level, we have a federal government that’s too big to fail. We need a government that’s small enough to succeed.
The closer this guy gets to the presidency, the more nervous I'm becoming. Here's audio of his comment:
Former Nixon counsel John Dean wrote an entire expose' on Walker, because yes, that's how obvious Walker has been about his intentions. Walker isn't just a "conservative without a conscience," as Dean has written, he's a "double high" authoritarian, shaping the country around his singular vision of power. Dean wrote this back in March of 2012, believe it or not:
My focus here is on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who strikes some who have written to me as a distinctively prototypical authoritarian politician; what social science has labeled as a “double high” authoritarian; and the type of person which I described in my book as a conservative without conscience. There are many examples of Walker’s harsh and uncaring treatment of those whom he does not believe to be entitled to equality. Desirous Of Personal Power: As governor, Walker sought to remove civil service jobs, in order to make them political appointments, and thus subject to his control. Most strikingly, he has sought to undercut the public-employee unions so that he would not have to deal with them, thus increasing his power. He has increased his personal power over some fifteen state agencies, and I suspect that he is just getting started. Walker’s push to get Act 10 passed into law was done in about as authoritarian a fashion as you will ever see, outside of a dictatorship.
And "slick" is too kind a word to use; liar works just fine, according to Dean:
His lying is notorious. Politifacts Wisconsin finds Walker to be an accomplished falsifier. I watched a video of a Walker speech at the Goldwater Institute. He’s slick; fast-talking, confident, and dishonest—I watched him distort facts with which I was familiar. He spoke in mostly half-truths. About twenty-five percent of the population has, in varying degrees, (a) disposition to follow a double high authoritarian, many blindly or simply because it assuages their fears. And, of course, these are aggressive followers who can attract others who are unaware of the nature of the person they are electing, thus enabling an authoritarian leader like Walker to gain ever-growing control. Good luck, Wisconsin.
...guess who would have carried on that tradition?
This was a desperate guy who wanted it all....
Photographer Andrew Snow, assigned to trail Walker at events and snap images of the candidate, collected $11,700 a month -- on pace to make $140,000 a year. Alyson Higgins, a personal aide to Tonette Walker, the governor’s wife, was allocated a salary of $89,000. At the helm was communications director Kirsten Kukowski, making $18,000 a month for an annual salary of more than $220,000. AshLee Strong, Kukowski’s communications deputy, was to make $164,000. And even Walker’s own children got into the campaign casino
windfall. Twenty-one-year-old Matt Walker and 20-year-old Alex Walker, who
indicated they would take time off from college to campaign for their father … Each
drew monthly stipends of $1,542, placing them on pace to draw $18,509 annually.
Still my favorite line comes from Rick Wiley, Walker's campaign manager:
"We didn't have a spending problem. We had a revenue problem."
There are times Scott Walker can't hide from the truth, no matter bizarre his answers get.
Remember when Republicans claimed the states debt was a result of over spending?
Now that it's clear Scott Walker overspent during his campaign for president, his $1 million debt has a different explanation. And spending wasn't it. jsonline:
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker raised $7.4 million for his short-lived presidential bid but spent his cash as quickly as it came in, leaving the campaign with a debt of at least $1 million once all the bills roll in, according to sources and a report filed with federal elections officials Thursday. The campaign burned through about $90,000 a day without even running major broadcast ads, doing so months before the first votes are cast.
Nope, the Walker campaign's answer takes us right down the rabbit hole. Ready for it...
Rick Wiley, Walker's presidential campaign manager ... pushed back criticism that he and the governor presided over an ill-advised spending spree for the campaign.
"We didn't have a spending problem. We had a revenue problem."
but... He told Milwaukee radio host Charlie Sykes, “Instead of doing what a lot of candidates do and sit back and whine
about this, that or whatever, to me, I accept it for what it is. It is what it is.” but... “They claim that they want substance, they claim that they don’t like fighting and yet that’s exactly what they put on air.” but...“The Republican debate the last go-round, it was a little bit like watching a Jerry Springer Show. They are much more interested in the personality battles.”
Talk about putting all his eggs in one basket, Scott Walker really did abandon Wisconsin to run for president, especially in July. One-Day-Walker.
It's so pathetic to hear pundits and GOP leaders nonchalantly admit, like it's no big deal, that Walker needs to "reacquaint himself with Wisconsinites?" Oh, that's all.
WPR: Walker's official calendar for July, released to The
Associated Press under the state's open records law, shows Walker spent one day
in July in Wisconsin on official business after launching his presidential run
July 13. The visit was to attend a Wisconsin Economic Development
Corp. board meeting and to sign a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks of
pregnancy. Walker canceled campaign events to spend another day in
Wisconsin to visit with the family of Carson Holmquist, a Marine killed at a
Navy-Marine reserve center in Tennessee.
Republicans nationwide saw Scott Walker's Wisconsin as small potatoes and not a trickle down experiment they could brag about. It's also possible I'm giving too much credit to a party hypnotized by the showbiz bloviating of agenda free Donald Trump. The one thing Walker's fall does prove is how completely out of touch conservative talk radio is in the state. Believe it or not, he's nothing like they said he was:
The two graphs below details Walker's drop:
Huffington Post: Since money is (often) the name of the game in politics, the above
graph is another important snapshot of Walker's campaign. Although the
Badger State Republican raised more than $20 million, it was all tied up
in his super PAC. Super PACs
can collect unlimited sums of money, but are restricted on how much
contact and coordination they can have with the candidate they back.
Walker's super PAC could spend money on ads supporting its candidate,
for example, but couldn't cut checks to his campaign staff or pay for
his travel. Walker's official campaign committee hasn't yet released
fundraising totals (those numbers are due to the Federal Election
Commission Oct. 15), but news outlets reported he wasn't bringing in any cash. As Politico noted, Walker's exit may point to the limitations of super PACs' true power over the nomination process.
Let's face it, Scott Walker is really bad with numbers, starting with his promise to create 250,000 new jobs, which he always followed up with the contradiction, government doesn't create jobs. That was our first clue.
Another thing, I never understood how cuts to spending became a substitute for responsible budgeting. Spending increased out a need to solve a problem, not because it was fun. So cuts to spending just left the problem for someone else to eventually deal with.
As the Washington Post detailed, Walker was your typical big spending, run up the charge card Republican we saw during the Bush years:
In a little more than two months, his presidential bid had amassed a debt of roughly $700,000, campaign manager Rick Wiley told the governor in a call Sunday night. Money has long been a problem for the Walker family: Unlike many candidates for president, Walker lacks personal wealth. As a young state lawmaker, he made less than $40,000 per year. When he became the Milwaukee County executive in 2002, he kept a campaign promise to return much of his salary, a total that he says reached $375,000 by 2010. As governor, Walker was paid nearly $148,000 per year, in addition to free housing in the governor's mansion, taxpayer-provided vehicles and other perks. He also received a $45,000 advance for the 2013 book he wrote about his fight with the unions. But financial disclosures revealed that Walker has tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, including a large balance on a card with an interest rate of more than 27 percent.
This part kills me, since Walker fought any attempt to rein in student loan debt:
His two sons have taken on at least $100,000 in student loan debt and have yet to graduate from college. It's clear that unlike some candidates in the race, Walker could not afford to absorb any potential debt of a presidential campaign. Several donors said Monday night that fear of debt was a driving factor in Walker's decision to so suddenly step out of the race.
And like the true carnival barker he'd become, showmanship was everything:
For an everyman candidate, his campaign events were often elaborately staged. In late July, Walker held a town hall at a family-style restaurant in Red Oak, a town with fewer than 6,000 residents in western Iowa. An advance team with a moving van of equipment arrived hours early to hang up flags, set up a sound system and arrange a stage with tiered seating to provide a backdrop of Iowans. Walker arrived with a large entourage: his security detail, campaign manager, personal aide, full-time campaign photographer, two Iowa-based staffers and a horde of low-level employees who handed out brochures. As he spoke for roughly an hour, one man on the stage had to shield his eyes from a bright spotlight. which worried some supporters, who considered the elaborate set-ups a waste of money so early in the campaign. These glitzy events seemed more suited to a candidate who had already locked down the nomination
Walker had the presidency in mind since day one of his career in politics, so what other reason did he have to give to voters?
It was unclear exactly why Walker wanted to be president.
He seemed to write much of his domestic and foreign policy as he went along,
rather than coming to the race with a clear vision of where he would take the
country. For many voters who are often tired of uncompromising career
politicians and gridlock in Washington, perhaps Walker's promise to fight
Democrats just wasn't enough.
The idea that Obama needed a teleprompter was as ridiculous as it sounds, but that attack was a distraction from the scary habit of responding to questions with well rehearsed memorized comebacks, that often didn't have anything to with the question:
Walker knows how to stay on message — but seems lost
when questions keep coming. Early in the campaign, Walker and his backers would
brag about his ability to relentlessly stay on message: He again and again
repeated the same campaign speech. He gave reporters the same answers to
questions about issues of the day. He memorized his announcement speech and
recited it. This often left him sounding robotic and not fully answering the
questions he was asked. But when reporters and cable news show hosts pushed for
specifics, Walker would often slip up, making comments that didn't quite make
sense or taking stances he didn't mean to take — but then hesitating to
take a different position or admit that he had misspoken, perhaps for fear of
cementing an image of being a flip-flopper. Instead, he appeared to lack clear
stances
Which brings us to how much of a coward Scott Walker was, and the big lie that he was "unintimidated."
Walker seems uncomfortable with direct confrontation. Ahead of the first Republican debate, I watched hours of video footage from
Walker's previous debates in Wisconsin. In a few of these, Walker had the
opportunity to ask his opponent a question and passed. Instead, he stuck to his
talking points and avoided confrontation. This is a candidate who built his presidential campaign on
the premise that he was a fighter — yet he seemed uncomfortable
confronting people face to face, especially fellow Republicans. On the early
campaign trail, Walker ignored protesters, maneuvered out of conversations that
turned testy, rarely held town halls and avoided follow-up questions from
reporters whenever possible.
What an honorable man? Think again. In the words of Salon's Joan Walsh:
In a sickening transparent attempt to make himself look like a leader, even as a quiter, Scott Walker is calling on the other candidates to be like Scott. Wow. Even God had a hand in his "brave" decision. Get a grip:
"I was sitting in church yesterday, the pastor's words
reminded me that the Bible is full of stories about people who were called to
be leaders in unusual ways. Today, I believe that I am being called to lead by
helping to clear the field so that a positive conservative message can rise to
the top of the field. With this in mind, I will suspend my campaign
immediately. "I encourage other Republican presidential candidates
to consider doing the same, so that the voters can focus on a limited number of
candidates who can offer a positive conservative alternative to the current
front-runner. This is fundamentally important to the future of the
party, and more importantly to the future of our country."
Scott Walker’s messianic parting message: Christlike
governor says he died for the party’s sins: Walker’s failure can’t be obscured
by silly claims that he’s “leading” by dropping out to save his party Thank God for small blessings: At least Scott Walker didn’t
credit God with his decision to drop out of this race, as he did with his
fledgling 2006 campaign against Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle. “I
believe that it was God’s will for me to run,” Walker said back then.
“After a great deal of prayer during the last week, it is clear that it is
God’s will for me to step out of the race.”
In fact, then, as now, Walker faced a harsh truth not from God, but from big donors:
They didn’t like the campaign he was running, they didn’t believe he could win
and they were looking to place their money with other candidates.
The idea that Democrats, progressives and liberals are the bad guys because we're glad to see an authoritarian dictator like Walker dropout, is outright bizarre and kinda pisses me off.
Here's the Walker we're familiar with in Wisconsin, and what the nation saw and abandoned in droves. Wonderful GIF:
NY Times: Walker called a news conference in Madison at 5 p.m.. Walker’s intended withdrawal is a humiliating climb down for a Republican
governor once seen as all but politically invincible. He started the year at
the top of the polls but has seen his position gradually deteriorate... ----------------------------------------- MotherJones: Immediately after the announcement, Liz Mair, a digital strategist for Walker's bid who was fired for tweeting negatively about Iowa, began spouting her thoughts about why Walker's campaign failed to attract enough money and momentum to keep it afloat.
Wisconsin reporters are so weak, so gutless when it comes to Scott Walker, that even when Walker is just one-half-of-one percent away from disappearing completely in the high profile race for the White House, they're complimenting him. Seriously, WTF:
Scott Walker had himself to blame for his lack of Q&A time. Walker's barely noticeable poll rankings pretty much meant no one cared about his big bold plans, like stripping Americans of health care, going to war with China, Russia, Syria and Iran, and removing a century's worth of labor rights men and women literally died for.
And because Walker's strategy of withholding/changing positions and trickling out his authoritarian dictatorial plans for America, reporters had nothing interesting from his past to bring up.
At the top of my list of Walker's most embarrassing moments? Walker's totally clueless answer to the minimum wage. He really doesn't get it. Walker wants you to forget the minimum wage and the millions of people stuck in them slaving all day at menial repetitive jobs. Instead, let's just talk about training people for really good paying jobs. See, problem solved?
Jake Tapper: "Dr. Carson says he wants to raise the minimum wage, you have called it a lame idea. Why is raising the minimum wage lame?" Scott Walker: "Said the best way to help people see their wages go up is to get them the education and skills they need...makes the congress live by the same rules (on health care) as everybody else." Jake Tapper: "Thank you. Dr. Carson, Gov. Walker didn't really answer the question but I'll let you..."
Thank you again Jake Tapper. But a few moments later, Walker interrupted and insisted he did answer the question and gave the same irrelevant "answer." Earth to Walker, minimum wage jobs don't go disappear because other people have training and get bigger checks.
Later, Tapper asked Walker about him calling the minimum wage lame. Walker responded that the best way to make sure people earn more than the minimum wage is to provide them with education. He then quickly shifted to cutting taxes as a way to create jobs. Tapper then turned to retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson on the issue, saying "Governor Walker didn't really answer the question." Walker soon afterward cut in. "I just want to address that issue because you said I didn't answer, and I did....The answer is to give people the skills and the education so they make far more than minimum wage." Said Walker adviser Robert O'Brien: "He was not going to be pushed around by either Donald Trump or Jack Tapper. He shut Trump down..." But while Walker had his high points, he also...
Wisconsin's weak media coverage of this carnival barker has dutifully cover-up for this guy again, over something the national media is having no problem seeing:
Total One Party Control of the Nation; Walker indicated early on that he would run for president if Republicans took the Senate. When that happened, our wannabe dictator, as I predicted, would quickly utilize the nuclear option and kill the filibuster. Democratic government programs? Gone. His political opponents? Destroyed. Walker said so in the debate tonight:
Walker's reckless moves against China and the Iran deal looked silly next to Rand Paul's and Jeb Bush's comments:
No one knows Scott Walker like we do in Wisconsin. In the audio clip below, put together by the Devil's Advocates, Walker is shown as the lying career bullshitter we know and hate. In Scott Walker's own words...
Holy crap, can Scott Walker's campaign for president be any more incompetent? According to Cap Times Jessie Opoien:
Walker is scheduled to speak at Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois, unveiling his plan to wreak havoc in the nation's capital. Yes, you read that correctly. "Gov. Scott Walker made a name for himself for wreaking havoc in Madison, and he has a plan to do so in Washington. He'll discuss his plans during a speech at the alma mater of President Ronald Reagan, Eureka College,"according to a press release from the campaign.
I would normally write some
kind of introduction to clearly setup my point, but none is needed. Thank
you The American Conservative:
Walker’s decline isn’t really all that puzzling ... Once
he started campaigning in earnest, the actual candidate did not compare well
with the imagined version of Walker that so many of his fans had created from
what little they knew about him from his tenure in Madison. He failed to live
up to a version of himself that never existed, and the reality of Walker turned
out not to be very interesting. In other words, nothing “happened” to Walker.
His weaknesses as
a national candidate were there for all
to see, but most Republicans preferred not to see them until Walker made
them impossible to ignore. Many of his fans assumed that Walker’s poor grasp of
foreign policy issues would be remedied over time, but instead he has just
adopted the most hard-line positions he could find with no sign that he has
thought seriously about any of them. It is often said that he has been hurt
most by Trump’s presence in the race, but that is mostly because he has
responded to Trump’s challenge in the most ham-fisted and clumsy way possible.
