I can’t imagine theWalker team is all that thrilled with the attention.
First up is thefairly personal profile of Walker in the National Journal, He Shall Not BeMoved.
It’s mostly arehashing of his rise to power, but it also includes some personaltidbits—surprisingly, since the mild-mannered, affectless Walker doesn’t revealmuch of himself in interviews or, according to this piece, even to those whosurround him. (Perhaps that’s why his memoir, Unintimidated, was so dull.)
Here’s the moneyquote:
SCOTT WALKERIS NOT charismatic. He did notgraduate from college. He is charming in small groups but unremarkable in frontof large crowds. In short, he lacks many of the attributes normally found inpresidential candidates. And yet he would arguably bring stronger credentialsto a national primary fight than anyone else in today's GOP. He's a governorwith extensive executive experience. He cut taxes. He opposes abortion. Heturned a massive budget deficit into a surplus. He's an outdoorsman who toutsthe Second Amendment. He challenged, and defeated, organized labor. There aresome key areas into which he hasn't yet waded—immigration, foreign policy—butif history is any indication, whatever positions he stakes out will beperfectly attuned to the mood of his party's right wing, presented in a waythat doesn't alienate the establishment.
Next up is theNational Review’s Scott Walker Gets Ready, which offers up details on thegovernor’s recent fundraising appearance at the New Jersey home ofgazillionaire Rich Roberts, who’s donated $100,000 to Walker.
And this is the pieceWalker’s handlers probably aren’t so happy about. Not only does the reportercriticize them:
As Walker wasgarnering applause from the lunch crowd, the aides he had in tow were gettingless positive feedback. Though operating on friendly turf, they acted skittish,guarded, and unfriendly. An event organizer complained that the governor’s teamwas dismissive and difficult to deal with, and that she found it nearlyimpossible to get Walker on the phone with his host.
But the reporternotes Walker’s swipes at his “potential rivals” in 2016, including his goodbuddy Chris Christie, and his veiled attacks on Rand Paul and, allegedly, ourgood friend Ron Johnson:
Walker also threwsome elbows at Washington Republicans, criticizing them for harping on issueslike the debt and the deficit without offering a positive vision for thefuture. “We have to be optimistic,” he said. He pointed to a particularsenator who “constantly talks about how horrible the debt is.” Walker saidthat, while he shares the sentiment, the issue has limited popular appeal. Attimes, he said that listening to the senator harping on it makes him “want toslit my wrists because I’m just like, ‘My God, this is so awful, I cannotbelieve this.’”
The JS’s Dan Bice checkedin with Walker to see if he was in fact talking about Johnson. Walker of coursedenied it but the National Review stands by all of Walker’s quotes in thepiece, although it hasn’t revealed who, exactly, Walker was discussing. Still, it’s neverhelpful to snipe at members of your party in a conservative publication ifyou’re trying to build a reputation as a good-guy team player who’s justinterested in getting results.
On to Scott Walker’sToxic Racial Politics, courtesy of Alec MacGillis at the New Republic. This isthe piece that Walker’s team really hates, but I think it provides a helpful—ifharsh—take on the state’s racial and political polarization, and how Walkerharnessed it:
He is the closestperson the party has to an early favorite, and not simply because of ChrisChristie’s nosedive from grace or because Jeb Bush is still waffling about hisintentions. Walker has implemented an impeccably conservative agenda in a statethat has gone Democratic in seven straight presidential elections. Unlike MittRomney, or, for that matter, John McCain, he is beloved by the conservativebase, but he has the mien of a mainstream candidate, not a favorite of thefringe. His boosters, who include numerous greenroom conservatives inWashington and major donors around the country, such as the Koch brothers, seehim as the rare Republican who could muster broad national support withoutyielding a millimeter on doctrine.
This interpretationof Walker’s appeal could hardly be more flawed. He has succeeded in the sort ofenvironment least conducive to producing a candidate capable ofwinning a national majority. Over the past few decades, Walker’s home turf ofmetropolitan Milwaukee has developed into the most bitterly divided politicalground in the country—“the most polarized part of apolarized state in a polarized nation,” as a recentseries by Craig Gilbert in the MilwaukeeJournal Sentinel put it. Thanks to a quirk of twentieth-centuryhistory, the region encompasses a heavily Democratic and African American urbancenter, and suburbs that are far more uniformly white and Republican than thosein any other Northern city, with a moat of resentment running between the twozones. As a result, the area has given rise to some of the most worrisometrends in American political life in supercharged form: profound racialinequality, extreme political segregation, a parallel-universe news media.
I blogged about thisbriefly, mostly about how Walker’s bubble prevents him from truly representingthe full width and breadth of Wisconsin. Since he benefits from one-party rule and a highly divided state,he only needs to negotiate with members of his party and appeal to those who voted for him. Therefore, he’s been ableto avoid negotiating with Democrats or compromising his vision and has built a solidly conservativerecord in Wisconsin, the record he’s going to try to ride into the White House in two years.
And last butdefinitely not least, is this new gem from the Center for Media and Democracy’sBrendan Fischer, who has waded into the gory details of the BradleyFoundation’s financial support for the entities fighting the John Doeinvestigation into Walker’s campaign and allied conservative groups.
Fischer found thatthe Bradley Foundation—helmed by Walker’s campaign chair, Michael Grebe—haspoured $18 million into anti-Doe activists, from backing groups createed by theWisconsin Club for Growth’s Eric O’Keefe (who’s suing in federal court to shutdown the investigation) to funding sympathetic media outlets like the FranklinCenter (which launched Wisconsin Reporter, who’s scooped the traditional mediawith their Doe pieces), to currying favor with prominent conservativejournalists and pundits via their Bradley Prizes. George Will and Wall StreetJournal columnists Kim Strassel and Terry Teachout have been honored with these$250,000 prizes, Fischer reported.
If Walker wants toraise his profile nationally, he’s going to have to learn how to handle thenational and independent media. They’re playing a whole different ballgame—andthey have the ability to take him down with his own words and actions. Noteveryone is as gullible as Sykes and Belling.
