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Republican Gov. Scott Walker probably thinks it’s good for his sugar plum visions of running for president that Wisconsin has caught the attention of political reporters around the country. He’s probably wrong.
That’s because the closer any serious student of politics looks at just how deeply and bitterly Walker’s actions have divided this state, the less it looks like any rational way to run a government.
There was a very good reason why Walker had to survive three elections in four years, a fact that seemed to impress some of the more naïve national reporters on election night.
That’s because after Walker’s first year in office, nearly a million people in his own state were so disgusted with his actions they signed petitions to recall him from office the moment it was legally allowed.
Walker won that recall and a tough re-election campaign that was neck-and-neck until some last-minute smears of his Democratic opponent, Mary Burke, in the final days.
But that doesn’t come close to proving that Republican Walker would be able to attract a broad range of voters in a usually Democratic Midwestern state in a presidential election.
It only shows that Walker’s extreme Republican policies can turn out Republicans in lower-turnout, off-year elections and specially scheduled recall elections.
And that he has made the voters of Wisconsin among the angriest and most politically polarized in the country.
Polarization Is Worse Now
After four years, an incumbent Walker was able to maintain his narrow victory margin of 52% from his first election in 2010, but just under half of Wisconsin voters still passionately want him out of their lives.
An in-depth examination of voting data and exit polls by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Washington reporter Craig Gilbert revealed just how much Walker’s political success depends almost entirely on the most Republican areas of the state as he has alienated most voters in urban areas.
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In 2014, Walker attracted only 6% of normally Democratic voters, fewer than any other Republican candidate for governor or senator in state history. At the same time, he won an overwhelming 96% of normally Republican voters.
Walker received only 22% of the vote in Milwaukee, the state’s largest and most racially diverse city. But his atrocious showing in urban Milwaukee and Dane counties was offset by winning every city, town and village in the deeply Republican exurban counties of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington by an enormous average margin of 52 points.
That’s good enough to win off-year gubernatorial elections, when Democrats have more trouble turning out core constituencies such as racial minorities and college students.
But it doesn’t really suggest very much strength for Walker even in his own home state during a high-turnout presidential election year, when voters are much more representative of the population as a whole.
A small number of extreme Republican counties in the state don’t determine election outcomes in presidential years. That’s why Wisconsin has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1988, even when it had Republican governors or one of its own congressmen on the national ticket.
There are good reasons why thundering hordes of Republican governors are now being mentioned in the early speculation about 2016 presidential candidates. Quick, think of an impressive Republican leader in Washington.
But the problem with governors is that many of them look much better from afar than they do close up. Often when governors step into the national media spotlight they appear to be fumbling fools like Texas Gov. Rick Perry or crashing bores like former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
Walker certainly isn’t boring, although people do tend to nod off whenever he speaks in public. But that’s because his entire political career has been based on putting a bland, innocuous face on vicious, right-wing Republican policies.
Walker believes in a democracy of the fittest where the people who are on top win and everyone else loses. That doesn’t bear much resemblance to the democracy most Americans believe in. Ultimately, it reduces the standard of living for all but the very privileged.
Under Walker’s natural selection version of democracy, those with the most wealth among us who contribute most generously to the winners of elections deserve the most generous rewards. Working-class drones who merely work hard to produce profits for their masters without ever achieving a corner office deserve the least.
That’s why Walker’s tax cuts reduce public services, education and the quality of life for all the rest of us while massively expanding the wealth of those at the top.
It’s hard to believe even Republicans would be short-sighted enough to nominate a presidential candidate who could angrily divide the entire nation as profoundly as he’s managed to turn Republicans and Democrats against each other in the once polite, respectable state of Wisconsin.
We’ve already had one civil war in this country.
