Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said on MSNBC's Morning Joe that Clint Eastwood's bizarre speech at the Republican National Convention, in Walker's own words, "was that one moment, which I cringed about".
Link to Huffington Post story about Walker's reaction to the Eastwood RNC speech
When a candidate for President of the United States is upstaged at his own party's national convention, that's usually a sign that he's already lost the presidential election. Michael Dukakis was upstaged at the 1988 Democratic convention by not one but two guest speakers: Ann Richards and Bill Clinton. Richards went on to be elected Governor of Texas two years later, Clinton went on to be elected President four years later, Dukakis lost the 1988 Presidential election to Republican George H.W. Bush. John Kerry was upstaged at the 2004 Democratic convention by the man that is now President of the United States, Barack Obama. One could even argue that John McCain's 2008 Republican vice-presidential running mate Sarah Palin upstaged McCain even before that year's Republican convention.
Now, Clint Eastwood, an actor and the former mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California who probably has no ambition to run for public office again, has upstaged Mitt Romney at the 2012 Republican convention, and made a complete fool of himself. That probably will not bode well for Romney's campaign at all.
Scott Walker himself probably owes the fact that he is still Governor of Wisconsin to a little-known wedding photographer from Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin by the name of Lori Compas, who, after she and her volunteers gathered enough signatures to force Republican Wisconsin State Senator Scott Fitzgerald to run in a recall election, upstaged the recall movement against Governor Walker by giving this speech at the Reclaim Wisconsin rally, which was held a couple of months prior to the Wisconsin recall elections earlier this year:
For the record, Lori Compas herself ran as the Democratic nominee in the Wisconsin State Senate recall against Scott Fitzgerald and lost, and Scott Walker survived the recall attempt against him, defeating Democrat Tom Barrett. Of course, Walker had big money from the Koch Brothers, Foster Friess, Diane Hendricks, and other right-wing billionaires and a media culture in Wisconsin that was very friendly to him to his advantage during the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election, and Compas had virtually no chance of actually defeating Scott Fitzgerald, but when I saw Compas's speech at the Reclaim Wisconsin rally, I said to myself, "why didn't she run against Scott Walker?" Of course, my parents wondered why Obama didn't run against George W. Bush after Obama upstaged Kerry at the 2004 Democratic convention.
Scott Walker knows that Clint Eastwood upstaged Mitt Romney and made a fool out of himself in one swoop.