Scott Walker joins the fray today

On the one hand, I'm pumped about Scott Walker "finally" joining the presidential race - as absurd as that sounds 16 months before the election. On the other hand, I'm already rolling my eyes at what he will now have to go through. Walker will want to talk about his track record of taking on entrenched liberals in crucial battles in Madison - and beating them. Consistently. And he'll want to talk about how he would apply those same approaches to governing the nation - which issues he would choose, why he could emphasis them, how he would succeed in Washington as he has in Madison.

And those are the things he should talk about. The idiotic political media will want to talk about what he might concerning evolution, or his Winnebego, or whether he's "ready for prime time." But I guess you know that before you decide to join the fray, and if you really believe you're called to do something, you can't let that stop you. So here we go:

Republicans laud Walker as a candidate with cross-party appeal, saying he has the potential to draw on Tea Party conservatives, social conservatives, and establishment-minded Republicans. His fight against public sector unions has been front and center in his campaign. “It’s got to be the cornerstone of his pitch,” said O’Connell. “It’s got to be his bloody rallying cry that the liberals came after him three times with everything they had and he never wavered. “

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Still, Republicans warn Walker against leaning too heavily on that one achievement. “It’s not enough,” said Robinson. “You can’t run solely on your biography, and so far, he’s been almost solely focused on that.” Republicans say he will need to find traction in other aspects of his record, particularly if he’s to go head to head with Bush. On the stump, where observers say Walker is getting better and better, he’s begun to broaden his argument. At the Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner in suburban Detroit in May, Walker sought to highlight reforms he’s championed as governor. Walker said he cut taxes in Wisconsin by $2 billion, cut back on regulations, turned a $3.6 billion budget deficit into a half-billion dollar surplus, fully funded the state’s pension system and reduced unemployment from 9.2 percent to 4.6 percent, while achieving one of the highest labor participation rates in the country at 68 percent. “We transformed everything,” Walker declared.

I've made no secret of this: Walker is at the top of my list right now, and has been for some time. That's not to say I've absolutely decided to vote for him in the primary, and it's certainly not to say I don't like any of the other contenders. But what sets Walker apart for me at this point is not just where he stands, but what he's done. The political battles with public employee unions in Wisconsin were both brutal and absolutely necessary to restore the fiscal integrity of the state, and Walker stood up and won those battles in the face of tactics that would have caused most governors - regardless of party - to capitulate. I get very tired of conservatives who "takes stands" for certain things, but don't have what it takes to deliver. You can never tell what a guy will be like once he becomes president, but the best indicator you can possibly have is a person's track record. Walker's track record is that he delivers. A lot of conservatives think George W. Bush was a big government Republican, but in many areas Bush's biggest problem was that the reforms he wanted to push through went nowhere in a Republican Congress, and he wasn't able to persuade terrified Republicans to get on board with things like the privatization of Social Security. I'm not saying it would be easy for Walker to do so, but what I'm absolutely convince of is that Walker has the intestinal fortitude for the fight. That's what we need. By the way, what's with the moron quoted in the excerpt above who is upset because Walker is running too much on his "biography." Walker is running on what he's accomplished? If that's what you call his biography, then yeah, more of that please. You want to do a side-by-side comparison of the real achievements of Scott Walker vs. those of Hillary Clinton? I'd list Hillary's first. It wouldn't take long. In fact, it wouldn't take any time at all because there aren't any. Walker still has to make the case that he is the right person to be president, and he has to be careful not to let the media make his campaign about "gaffes" or whatever other nonsense they prefer to talk about. But without a doubt, the quality of this campaign is going to get a lot better today.