Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) as he wishes to be seen
Ending absolutely no suspense, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is running for president, bringing the total number of Republican candidates to either
17 or
15, depending how far down in the barrel you scrape. Walker announces with, of course, a
tweet and a
video with a movie trailer-style voiceover intro and a lot of shots of him in jeans and a Harley-Davidson t-shirt at an Iowa event.
You don't have to scrape far down in the polling barrel to get to Walker, who is running first in Iowa. But Walker also officially enters the race seeming like a less formidable candidate than he did in the early days of his pre-campaign campaigning, because he screwed up a lot back then. Walker has lightened his campaign schedule to try to bone up on policy, a la Sarah Palin in 2008, but concerns remain:
“His lack of knowledge in the foreign policy area has been a problem because, well, you want your commander in chief to be confident on those issues,” said Bruce Perlo, chairman of the Grafton County Republican Committee in New Hampshire. [...]
“A lot of us are still worried about Walker’s off-the-cuff answers, and about how Walker will handle himself when the real shooting starts in Iowa, when the television attack ads and direct-mail pieces start hitting him,” said the Republican, who leads a prominent national conservative group and is not aligned with any presidential candidate. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly assess Mr. Walker, with whom he has a good relationship.
There's also the matter of Walker's record in Wisconsin. He'll be marketing it as a strength, but any canny opponent should be able to
poke serious holes in that:
The governor often highlights rising test scores and graduation rates as evidence that the 2011 union law worked. What he doesn't mention is Wisconsin's graduation rates were increasing for years before he took office, and the recent growth is not as strong as the national average. Wisconsin's ACT scores have been among the best in the nation since before Walker was elected. They ranked third the year before he took office and ranked second in 2012. [...]
The state's chief economic development agency that Walker created, a hybrid public-private partnership, has been beset with problems, including handing out $124 million in loans without properly vetting the recipients. Walker was over 100,000 jobs short on his signature 2010 campaign promise to create 250,000 private-sector jobs. Wisconsin's job growth has lagged not only the national average but its Midwest neighbors as well.
And that's not getting to the controversial budget he just signed—one that had to deal with a major shortfall despite all his bragging about how the policies of his first four years were going to be great for Wisconsin's finances.
Walker is scheduled to announce at 6:15 p.m. eastern time.