Getty Images
It’s fascinating to watch the national media slowly come to realize just how fundamentally dishonest Gov. Scott Walker can be.
Walker’s likable, low-key personality makes a good first impression. But it didn’t take many in Wisconsin long to recognize the double-talking radical extremist behind that bland persona.
That’s why Wisconsin may now be the angriest, most politically polarized state in the nation. Now the rest of the country is beginning to see why.
Walker may seem like a wide-eyed, Midwestern innocent next to crude political thugs like former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, but that’s just because he’s perfected a mild-mannered, gentler form of dishonesty.
No one in Wisconsin is surprised that even though Walker said publicly during his re-election he wouldn’t support a right-to-work law in the current Legislature, Republicans are now rushing the law through with little public discussion and Walker’s support.
In Wisconsin, we know that what Walker says he’ll do when running for office bears little resemblance to what he does after he’s elected.
Walker biggest priority after he was elected in 2010 turned out to be something he never mentioned in his campaign—repealing half a century of labor law in Wisconsin to destroy collective bargaining rights for public employees.
Walker doesn’t even consider it a lie to support and sign a state right-to-work law after saying he wouldn’t. It’s just politics as he practices it.
Walker may not consider the other lies that Republicans tell—for example, to destroy people’s right to vote or refuse to expand health care—to be lies either. They’re just things Republicans say to justify the ugly things they do.
On right to work, Walker and right-wing Republicans say they’re really worried about the freedom of workers represented by unions. They want those workers to be free to receive higher pay and fringe benefits negotiated by unions without having to pay any union dues.
|
|
How do we know they’re lying? Because we already know what Republicans think of people they say receive something for nothing from the government.
Walker and his gang think all those people are lazy deadbeats who should be drug-tested within an inch of their lives.
The real reason Republicans support right-to-work laws is to cut wages for working people. Weaker unions mean lower wages. Walker and Republicans are simply delivering what the wealthy employers who contribute to their political campaigns want.
Smearing the President
Walker is now taking his personal form of dishonesty national. The performances of Walker and Giuliani at a Walker fundraiser in New York illustrated the difference between Giuliani’s old-style, political dishonesty and Walker’s new, improved version.
Giuliani smeared President Barack Obama in the old-fashioned, red-baiting way by accusing him of being un-American, saying America’s first black president wasn’t raised properly like the Republicans in the room.
“I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Giuliani said.
Unlike other potential Republican presidential candidates, including Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, who immediately distanced themselves from Giuliani’s offensive remarks, Walker denied the former mayor had crossed a line on his behalf.
Then, unbelievably, Walker said he really didn’t know whether the president of the United States was a patriotic American who loved his country or not.
“I’ve never asked the president so I don’t really know what his opinions are on that one way or another,” Walker said.
None of the rest of us has ever asked President Obama about his patriotism either, but anyone not blinded by racial hatred or dishonestly trying to attract votes from those haters certainly knows Obama, twice elected president based on his vision of how great America can and should be, loves his country.
Walker, however, apparently was so pleased with his clever, politically dishonest attack on the president that he attempted an even more outrageous version of it a few days later.
Walker, a Baptist minister’s son supported by the religious right, told reporters for The Washington Post he didn’t actually know whether President Obama was even a Christian.
“I don’t know,” Walker said. “I’ve actually never talked [to Obama] about it or I haven’t read about that. I’ve never asked him that.”
It’s remotely possible Walker really doesn’t read much and doesn’t know Obama is one of the most openly Christian presidents in American history, a man who sometimes inserts Bible verses and allusions to parables into his public speeches.
More likely Walker was simply sounding a racial dog whistle to get the attention of vicious racists who believe Obama is a Kenyan-born, Muslim terrorist.
After that blew up in Walker’s face with ugly headlines and Sunday talk show derision, his spokeswoman quickly backtracked: “Of course, the governor thinks the president is a Christian.” Well, why didn’t he say so?
It didn’t take long for the bright national spotlight to expose the dark, fundamentally dishonest side of Walker Wisconsin already knows.
