You want to not only win the presidency, but you want to elect someone who is not only conservative but has proven he can achieve difficult conservative goals even in a very hostile environment -
right?
Actually those are criteria I hold dear. Perhaps I'm projecting that onto you, because if the fate of Scott Walker's campaign is any indication, most of you
weren't interested in that at all:
In theory, Walker was a strong candidate because he could tell the more moderate wing of the Republican Party that he could win a general election, having won three straight races in Wisconsin, traditionally a blue state. At the same time, Walker's record in Wisconsin of severely limiting public employee unions, defunding Planned Parenthood and enacting laws such as a voter ID provision would appeal to conservative, Tea Party Republicans. Walker would win by being to the right of ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, but to the left of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz/
He often candidly admitted this was his strategy. It didn't happen.
The establishment wing of the Republican Party largely rejected Walker. Some major donors in New York and other big cities, as well as elected officials such as Maine U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, got behind Bush early in the race. Many of the Jeb Bush backers are moderate themselves on issues like immigration and viewed Bush as in sync with them. Others felt loyalty to the Bushes or viewed Jeb Bush, with his multi-ethnic family, as a candidate who could win Latino voters and therefore was more electable nationally than Walker.
With so many candidates in the race, the media have almost absolute power to decide who's going to wither on the vine simply by limiting their coverage
The idea that Walker was the guy who could unite both the Tea Party and the establishment was much of what drove the interest in him early on - at least among those who view all election campaigns from the horse-race perspective. I was enthusiastic about Walker for an entirely different reason: The guy has proven he can govern effectively, by which I mean he decides on good public policy, gets the policy passed, successfully defends the policy in the political and legal arena, and administers the policy in a way that ensures it actually works for the public.
Put Walker and his accomplishments in Wisconsin up against Hillary Clinton and her utter lack of accomplishment anywhere, and you should theoretically have had a dream race for Republicans. And yet, here we are. So just as I asked the same question last week about Rick Perry - the highly successful conservative governor of the very prosperous state of Texas - I'll ask it again about Walker: Why did almost none of you back him?
The most common criticism I've heard is that he had a bunch of "flip-flops" and missteps. I also saw people upset because Walker didn't interrupt people during the debates - something they believe he should have done because he was called on so rarely by the media "moderators".
I actually think all of this is peripheral. With so many candidates in the race, the media have almost absolute power to decide who's going to wither on the vine simply by limiting their coverage. If they're going to ignore your serious policy proposals and cover you only when you can be said to have messed up, while they give another guy attention every time he breathes, it's going to be virtually impossible for you to do anything in the polls.
Walker did the things a serious candidate should do. He made serious policy proposals, including
this one on health care and
this one on federal unions. He went on Meet the Press and spent 30 minutes
getting seriously in-depth on a wide range of issues, and schooling the ignorant, dishonest and shallow Chuck Todd on the real facts concerning Wisconsin's economic performance under his leadership.
And yet what did you hear about? You heard that Walker proposed to build a wall on the Canadian border, which he absolutely did not - as we demonstrated in the last link in the previous paragraph.
Walker was also criticized heavily for two other statements. One was actually a series of different answers to the question of birthright citizenship, which reflected a position that has changed for him as he's given it more thought. Yes, it was unclear and confusing. But so is the issue. I know some of you think it's simple and straightforward (NO ANCHOR BABIES!!!!), but for someone serious about policymaking and governing, it's a lot more complicated than that. Walker's sin here was to treat something complicated as what it is, when the voters just want to hear that with the snap of a finger it can all be made to go away.
Walker also got a lot of criticism for saying his fight against 100,000 union protesters in Madison was proof he was prepared to take on ISIS. I actually thought, on substance, it was a pretty reasonable argument. The point was that, unlike Obama, Walker is not afraid of a fight. People made it out to be a claim of moral equivalence between unionized state employees and ISIS, which of course would be a horrible comparison if that had been what he meant.
But so much of what happens in politics is not about what you mean. It's about what people can claim you meant. They claim he meant to build a wall on the Canadian border when he didn't. They claim he compared unions to ISIS when he didn't. And this is made out to be the candidate's fault because his "missteps" led to the confusion.
In reality, I don't think any of this determined Walker's fate. I think the media decided long ago that they weren't going to cover any candidate whose entire approach to the campaign was serious and substantive - especially one that posed a serious threat to Hillary. They prefer to cover rude comments about people's faces, or to have apoplectic seizures about a guy
who doesn't think a Muslim president is a good idea.
In order to get attention for himself, Walker would have to have done something outrageous in one of the two debates. And since he hardly had any questions directed at him by the media "moderators," that would have required him to shout over someone or otherwise act like the type of rude, obnoxious candidate the media like to cover. That is very much not who Scott Walker is, so he got criticized for being a "wallflower" and not assertive enough, when in fact the problem is that the entire format and execution of these debates is a complete joke.
Even so, I fault Republican primary voters for the demise of serious, qualified conservatives like Scott Walker and Rick Perry. It's very easy, as I wrote last week, to get information about any and every candidate running. If Republican voters don't know about the qualifications of guys like this, or aren't interested in nominating someone with such track records, then I understand to my utter horror why Hillary still thinks she has a chance. The Republican nominating process is simply not serious enough to give us the type of candidate who can not only win but really perform well as president. And the people who are always complaining about "the establishment" - which is certainly guilty of many things - should look at themselves and the role they're playing in this debacle as well.
As Rob mentioned to me in a message yesterday, we now live in an upside down world in which Scott Walker is out and Lindsey Graham is still in. Yeah. I know. I'll stay away from the tall buildings but on days like this it's not easy.
Here are some dopey cliches not to use in your answers:
