For all those out there who continue to refuse to take the threat that he is on track to be the 45th president of the United States seriously, you need look no farther than this past week.
His career has been an odd conglomeration of being willing to do or say anything to get elected, sucking up to those with the money to make it happen, ruthlessness with a smile and dumb luck. This week provided him with two more ingredients that fit that recipe perfectly.
See below the cheese doodle...
Two more news stories this week will help the crazies in the GOP love him all the more, inoculate him against criticism that should come his way and still leave him looking like the "son of a preacher man" and savior to suburban white folk everywhere.
The first of these is good for him because it plays into old-fashioned GOP law and order and racial politics. An unarmed nineteen year-old man was gunned down by police in Madison on Friday night. Protests quickly ensued.While this is a tragedy for the young man, his family and the community, it is like Christmas in March for Scott Walker. Here's why: Protests in Madison allow him to stand up to ISIS again. Since this is going on in Madison, his city as governor, he will have a stage to show his friends in the RWNJ community how he supports cops no matter what. This will be in stark contrast, as Fox Noise will call it, to President Obama and Attorney General Holder. A further added bonus for Walker is that he will continue to be the guy who knows how to put down those "pesky" women, minorities and unions when they try to stand up for themselves. A win for him all around and the same week the DOJ report on Ferguson came out no less...RW gold!!
The other big help to Walker and the one that makes me wonder what powerful forces are helping him is the New York Times article and resulting RWNJ freak out over Sec. Clinton's e-mail servers. He quickly condemned Hillary for....well....obeying the laws and rules as they were at the time? Anyway, the real reason it helps him is not that there is really any "There" there. It is because one of the two or three things Dems could really hit him hard on was his own personal e-mail server that he had hidden in a wall of his office when he was Milwaukee County executive. Multiple members of his staff used it to do campaign business on government time and Walker himself probably did so as well while he was running for governor. More on the e-mail system here. Now, he is either inoculated against these attacks or at the very least will be able to play the same false-equivocation game right wingers always do (and the media always buys hook line and sinker) when they see one Democrat do a mild version of something filthy or rampant the right wingers do on a systemic or criminal level.
Add these events to the fact that he finished eviscerating unions in Wisconsin with a shiny, new Right to Work for Less law this week, announced he will sign a ban on abortions after the twentieth week of pregnancy, and he announced this week he is seeking to end the program that allows poor (read mostly non-white) students from Milwaukee to attend suburban public schools and he will put that money into vouchers for private schools. It is a home run of a week for Walker.
In the end , it all fits my personal theory that this is 2008 all over again. The problem is Jeb Bush is playing '08 Hillary, Walker is Obama and '12 Hillary is the McCain who's "turn it is" to be nominated.
Walker is dangerous because he seems slow-witted and harmless enough and never tips his true agenda until he has the absolute power to enact it. He is a bigger threat to democracy than most who live outside of Wisconsin can fathom yet, the night he won the recall I turned to my wife and told her he will be the next president of the United States. He has unlimited funds, the conservative echo chamber in the media and great handlers on his side.
Mark my words, the moment that the election will turn inexorably in Walker's favor is when he goes to the first debate with Sec. Clinton who has not had to debate anyone in years. Scottie-boy will come off as smug and arrogant though uninformed (a great combo if ever there was one) and, if she responds in the exasperated way she did at the Benghazi hearings, the media will eat her alive for it. Men can get angry or frustrated and show emotion in a campaign. Women are not afforded that luxury in our media. It is a double standard and it is wrong but it is true.
As People who care about the future of America, we need to urge Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb and Bernie Sanders all to run and to debate her vigorously. If she wins (she likely still would get the nomination) at least she will have shaken off the rust and will be ready to go toe to toe stylistically (we know she beats Walker on knowledge and substance twenty times over but since when has being more qualified mattered when picking who to vote for anymore) with Scottie the Dropout. I fear for Democrats and For America if we hold a coronation on the Democratic side while the scourge that is Scott Walker continues to pick up steam and build passion among his base and, worse still, the middle like he has in Wisconsin (Soon to be North Mississippi).