The big news, details below, is that Scott Walker won't commit to serving a full 4 year term if he's re-elected Governor in 2014.
It's not just fundraising that Gov. Scott Walker (R-FitzWalkerStan) has been doing for the past 2 years although he's hauled in a mountain-sized pile of dough from the monied elite. He continues to spend more time out of state than in the state he claims to serve for the national attention he craves so much to feed his bottomless pit of political ambition. He's clearly looking for his next "job" and now he's finally admitting it.
He spends so much time out of state that a pile of bills awaited his signature on his return to Wisconsin this past Monday including one that stripped the powers of Democratic Secretary of State Doug LaFollette. Walker and his GOP majority in the State Legislature eliminated the publishing of legislation that has enacted (Republicans don't think the public needs to be informed about what they've passed because ... Google and stuff ... they can look it up themselves) among the other duties of the SoS which they ended.
Revenge, you see, because LaFollette delayed laws like the union stripping Act 10 for the maximum of 10 days he legally could before publishing them which enabled injunctions to be filed with the courts. So rapid was the ram through of new legislation by Republicans that it was impossible to even know what was fully inside the bill to compose a lawsuit about it before it was passed and signed into law. Well, no more. The public will just have to sit in both legislative chambers and the Governors office to know what's about to become law because they won't get that information newspaper anymore.
Well, that's the way we've been governed here, but it's off the subject I'm writing about today so I'll get back to Snottys ambitions.
While Scott Walker doesn't give his time any more to state or local media that's not hard right wing (he's a frequent guest on RW hate radio, but can't find the time for actual journalists), they continue to pander to him anyway no matter how badly he treats them or how often he ignores them and denies access. Not so much the national press from which we get most of our information on Walker.
For a guy with national ambition, cozying up to the national press is a necessity as was a coziness he had with state and local press before the 2010 elections that helped put him in the Governors office.
Politico caught up with him about his speech this week in Iowa at CPAC where RWNJs go to bloviate about how awesome the RW agenda is and how they are "winning". It's pretty hard to avoid the national press, particularly when he needs them to continue his quest for national prominence.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker acknowledged in an interview Friday that he’s open to a presidential bid and pointedly declined to pledge to serve a full four-year term if he’s reelected next year.
Walker insisted he was visiting Iowa in May only because he was invited by Gov. Terry Branstad. But when pressed about his White House ambitions, the Wisconsin Republican said: “Would I ever be [interested]? Possibly. I guess the only thing I’d say is I’m not ruling it out
Perhaps even more notably, Walker wouldn’t commit to serving throughout a second four-year term. He said his focus is on substance, not longevity.
“For me, it’s really a measure of what I’ve accomplished and what more I could accomplish if I was in a different position,” Walker told POLITICO at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he spoke Saturday morning.
(bolding is mine)
No committment to serve a full term if elected Governor again? Well, that's not going to sell well to the folks back home.
And looking forward to a shiny new job, as usual. The way he eyeballed the Governorship while he was Milwaukee County Executive and maneuvered his way around the state in the years before he ran. Of course, if you're a guy who rewards friends and donors while punishing your enemies, you're not interested in governing and you tend to create a big mess. There's only so much of that which can be swept under the carpet before you need to move on and let someone else clean up the place. It's the Walker Way and we'll be cleaning up the Mount Everest sized pile Walker left for the taxpayers of Milwaukee County when he left for the Governors office. He's rapidly leaving an even bigger mess in Madison, so a new job is definitely needed for him to avoid responsibility for his own failures.
thanks to national profile he won from the public employee fight and failed recall, Walker has become an in-demand fundraiser for GOP causes. He addressed a retreat for some of the RNC’s biggest donors last weekend outside of Miami and raised money Friday night for Virginia gubernatorial hopeful Ken Cuccinelli.
Wisconsin taxpayers, naturally, foot the bill for his huge entourage and enormous security staff, something he doesn't want us schmucks back home to realize.
By the way, his schedule hasn't been available to anyone since he became Governor. You think he wants to hide how much time he spends outside of the state?
But Walker, 45, used the question about diversity to note that the Republican challenge isn’t merely that it’s a party dominated by white males.
“It goes to old white guys” he said, adding: “I’m not an old white guy.”
Raising two potential 2016 Democratic heavyweights, Walker said: “When you think of names like Clinton and Biden — those are people from a bygone generation of politics. So I think a new fresh face, be that somebody who is ethnically a minority or a new face to the national scene. Ideas matter more than just how someone looks … what really matters is our nominee should be someone who’s optimistic, relevant and courageous.”
That mantra – optimistic, relevant and courageous – has become Walker’s new shorthand for how the GOP needs to heal itself and perhaps is the makings of his own eventual presidential message.
Yeah, what the GOP needs is another middle aged White Guy, like the failed Paul Ryan Vice Presidential bid.
While seeming to disapprove the Republican plan to improve their messaging rather than their agenda, he continues to see the problem as one of messaging.
But the Badger State chief executive said the GOP challenge is no mere “communications issue.”
“Relevance is not just [that] we need a slicker job of explaining it or putting better commercials out,” he said. “I think it goes deeper than that. Relevance is taking those principles and applying them to things that are relevant where people’s lives are.”
Entitlement reform and the long-term debt, for example, should be put in terms grandparents and their grandchildren can understand, he said: how bringing down spending will ultimately improve the economy so future generations may find better job prospects and enjoy a better quality of life.
“Put things in those terms and then I think you make it a moral, not just a fiscal, issue,” he said. “People want to act on it.”
Politico adores this guy, but what else would we expect from them.
If you can stomach it, here's his CPAC speech:
He hits all the applause lines RWrs love (God, prayer, country, Big Gunmint, union busting, patriotism, "government dependence", states rights, social program bashing, tax "reform", "courage" and, of course, how awesome Scott Walker is). Frankly, the lies he tells about property taxes (his budget prohibited property taxes from increasing and declining property values caused some reductions in tax bills), "gaining" jobs (we're #42 in job creation and our unemployment rate just went up again), but generally focused on having "an optimistic message". Yup, all sunshine for Scott Walker all the time because, yeah, he's an awesome governator.
The most sickening part is his focus on a teacher who got laid off. She was named a best teacher, but got laid off. He focused on the fact that she was laid off instead of some other teacher and NOT on the fact that a lot of teachers were laid off because he stripped nearly a billion dollars out of education in Wisconsin. His point, of course, was to promote the old Republican meme of getting rid of unions, seniority and promoting "merit pay", plans that sound good but always result in favoritism and cronyism.
Hang onto your lunch here. Scott Walker also claims to "love poor people".
He uses his tried and true applause lines including the one about celebrating the 4th of July and not the 15th of April, "freeeeedum", prosperity, and rang all the RWNJ bells.
Yup, he wants to be President. He needs to be President so some other schmuck will have to clean up the mess he's left in Wisconsin.
God help us.
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UPDATE: It seems I'm not the only one reading Politico:
Mike Tate, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said in a statement, "That Scott Walker would openly contemplate a run for president after a dismal record of job loss, division, diminished standards and unethical conduct is shocking in itself. Perhaps the best Republicans can do is a Governor who is last in the midwest in every economic indicator."
Tate added, "That he is openly and baldly displaying that he would rather serve his ambition than the people of Wisconsin whom he has already failed is disappointing but not surprising."
Nope, I'm not surprised either.
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