Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
What Happened to Scott Walker?
If you look back to the spring and early summer (a period before, it should be noted, he was even an officially declared candidate), there was a fair bit of talk about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as the “frontrunner” for the Republican presidential nomination. Fast forward to September, and we’ve got a new CNN poll that shows Walker as little more than a rounding error. He’s actually trailing Rick Santorum, who’s yet to make it to a prime-time debate.
Writing at Bloomberg Politics, John McCormick paints a grim picture of the current state of the Walker campaign:
The signs of his precipitous fall were all too vivid Sunday afternoon inside Serena’s Coffee Café in Amana, Iowa, where about 40 stoic supporters showed up for his first retail campaign event in the state since Wednesday’s debate.
Gone were most of the network television cameras that had followed Walker much of the summer. Just one network was on hand, along with one reporter-photographer from a nearby station in Cedar Rapids. A second event at a Pizza Ranch in Vinton, Iowa, brought out another small crowd, along with one local TV camera.
Walker lingered at both events, shaking virtually every hand. He’d woken Sunday morning to news that he’d fallen below 1 percent in the most recent national CNN poll, a new all-time low for his candidacy that could further rattle donors.
You can play out what happens next as you like. Maybe Walker is Rudy Giuliani, learning the hard way that being an early frontrunner only gives you more time to be knocked off your pedestal. Or maybe he’s John McCain, and being on the cusp of annihilation will inject a newfound sense of urgency into his campaign. In a race with dynamics this strange, I wouldn’t be willing to put down money on either proposition.
What I’m genuinely curious about is what exactly has happened to the governor over the past several months. There has been plenty of media speculation on the matter (including by me), but we’re all making, at best, educated guesses.
That’s why I’d like to turn the matter over to Ricochet members, who also seem to have cooled to the idea of Walker as the GOP nominee, albeit not at the same rate as the broader primary electorate. In our April poll, 68 percent of you identified Walker as either your first or second choice for the nomination, easily the largest number for any candidate. By the time we wrapped up the August polling, that number had dropped to 35 percent, with Walker trailing Carly Fiorina and tied with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio on the cumulative first choice-second choice total. (Walker tied Fiorina in the first choice poll, led Cruz by three points, and bested Rubio by five).
So here’s my question: for those of you who have gotten off the Walker bandwagon, what caused your defection? And are there circumstances under which you might be tempted to get back on? If so, what are they?
Published in Politics
Someday, when this primary turns to issues, Scott Walker will be yuuuuuuuuggggge!
He just has to wait out this usual time in the primary, when we concentrate on when John McCain was a POW wearing Carly Fiorina’s face while calling Megyn Kelly a bimbo for not correcting a guy who called the President a Muslim.
Same old same old.
Scott Walker for Secretary of Labor!
He comes across as the insurance guy from two towns over who decided to run for county water & sewer commissioner. You hear from people who live over that way that he’s a nice guy but…
The way we pick Presidential nominees in this era doesn’t make it easy for a guy who takes his current job seriously. Former elected officials, retirees, the independently wealthy, and people with a job that doesn’t demand much time (AKA: US Senator) have a big advantage.
Am I remembering correctly that Walker doesn’t have a campaign strategist?
Wow…did you ever hit the nail on the head.
A hour or so ago I was commenting on Metalheaddocs post about Trump. When I was listing who I would/wouldn’t vote for I totally forgot about Walker and had to refer to the GOP candidate’s list to remind me.
That’s sad. When a die-hard political junkie like me forgets a front runner like Walker, I think that says a lot regarding his campaign. It’s forgettable.
By the way, some times I think we rush candidates. It’s not their time yet and/or some times they are better left where they are because they can do far more at that level or position than they can as whatever we want them to be. Doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be a good president…just not now.
Do you think Dr. Carson ever thought about running for president until after he made his remarks about Obamacare? Possibly. But more likely some one approached him about the presidency because he gained a lot of positive support afterwards.
There is a downside to the RNC outsourcing most of its work in corralling and presenting its candidates to the media and Walker’s fall is part of that.
I think the dramatic change comes from a couple of reasons.
First, he’s been out of the news for a while since his reelection. When the recall fights were huge and before others had declared for office he led a commanding lead because he was leading the conservative fight at the time – particularly pre-November 2014 when we’d been through a disheartening loss in 2012 and Walker was winning victories when the best we could do was prevent defense.
Second, the media has made a huge difference here. This isn’t a bash on the media to cause Rob to ride out to defeat the complainers but the media has to drive ratings to sell advertising to actually continue to exist and who makes ratings? Ben Carson’s gaffe today, Carly’s HP history with salaciously related details and always the travelling circus that is Donald Trump. Walker is typically Midwestern: steady, calm, intelligent, measured. Great qualities in a President but terrible qualities for the media to follow. Some bumps in his immigration and corn subsidy positions haven’t helped.
Third, the debates as currently used haven’t helped because he is so measured. The debates are treated as ratings events (especially given the boffo ratings they’re bringing in) so the moderators are focusing on the main event: Trump. Walker would probably do better in a Lincoln-Douglas style event that we, passionate political junkies, all say we want but doesn’t work in today’s television environment.
Scott Walker is not now, nor was he previously, the man for the moment because what makes a good candidate is different from what makes a good president and while those skillsets can overlap they very often do not (see Perry, Rick and Obama, Barry).
Is it over?
Why did he hire Brad Dayspring, of all people? He didn’t pay attention to the mess in Mississippi? Does anyone think he’d be good as VP? He could learn the ropes, without so much glaring light thrown on him.
He’s Out.
Three things:
1. Got a little wonky on immigration.
2. Hard time to sell his success as a Governor when most right leaning folks are so dissatisfied with our direction as a nation.
3. He doesn’t have that Rubio-like veneer others have mentioned that would have helped him hold it together until the others fell out.
Well that’s partially true, but only partially. He certainly could not have accomplished what he did in Wisconsin without a solid conservative majority in the legislature, and those legislators in both houses were indeed heroic in standing up to incredible pressure and death threats to see it through. But Walker was the one who initially had the vision and the chutzpah to propose the changes to collective bargaining, and he was able to win over members of the legislature who were at first skeptical and quite resistant. So kudos to him there.
Where Walker fell down (and he admits as much in his book) was in communicating the value of these changes to the rest of the people of Wisconsin. When we went through the Act 10 Civil War here (and it was awful!), Walker did not effectively rally people or inspire us to fight, at least not at first; others, such as conservative talk radio did that. A lot of people caught in the middle of the fighting wondered why we were being put through all of this. Eventually, it was sheer disgust at the outrageous behavior of the lefties and unionistas that brought so many to stand behind Scott Walker. I still appreciate his having the courage and foresight to do what he did in Wisconsin, but articulate and inspiring rhetoric was not part of the package.
Again, he admits to this shortcoming in his book, so I was looking for improvement in the communication department –but so far I’m not seeing it. We went through an ugly budget debate this past Spring in Wisconsin, and once more Walker did not communicate the reasons for some of the more controversial cuts. On the campaign trail, his messaging has been disciplined to the point of seeming canned. He repeats the same phrases and themes so often that what was at first refreshing soon sounds like bromides. He just does not inspire. After a while, he just sounds like another pol.
I don’t like to bash Governor Walker. I like him, and am forever grateful for what he did for Wisconsin. Maybe he will get better with time and age. But I think he should just be our governor for a while longer. We worked hard enough to get and keep him there.
Wow — that was much faster than I expected. Even after what I just wrote above, this makes me very sad.
It is likely unfortunate, but I think what happened to Walker is a version of what happened to Richard Nixon, in his 1960 debate with Kennedy, where Nixon was visibly sweaty on stage. People wondered why, and that combined with shenanigans in Cook county (Chicago) costing Illinois lost him the election.
Walker just doesn’t show well on TV and combined with a laid back style and some ineffectiveness at communicating his position means he bleeds support.
Management skills are not enough. We want (and I think really need) someone who can explain why conservative approaches are better, in 2 sentences or less, Walker just doesn’t seem able to do this, and doesn’t create a necessary buzz.
Perhaps in a future year, he will overcome these issues, after all Nixon did.
Mr. Dart
The way we pick Presidential nominees in this era doesn’t make it easy for a guy who takes his current job seriously.
Bingo.
Not to mention that if you take your current job seriously, it is almost impossible to put together the organization that is necessary to take and hold a job like the presidency.
Good timing, Troy.
This. We were excited to get a fighter in Scott Walker, but that never materialized. In fairness to him, I think a lot of primary voters were looking for someone with a pugilistic personality, yet Gov. Walker’s “fighting” takes place mostly behind the scenes and out of sight of the media. When the persona didn’t match the expectation, he lost ground fast.
It’s a darn shame.
-E
I didn’t ask to be this powerful.
I just am.
Careful now. You let that head get too much bigger and we’ll have to have MFR post some more embarrassing pics.
-E
Or lucky.
First Perry and now Walker. Either, if nominated, would have been a formidable opponent of Hilary. Both campaigns failed because a candidate Bill Clinton encouraged to run–Trump–displaced everybody else’s media bandwidth.
The Clintons love it when a plan comes together.
Couldn’t you have done a post on “What Happend to Obama?” or “What happened to Trump?”
Donald Trump — Todd Akin and Christine O’donnell and Richard Mourdock and Sharron Angle all rolled in One!
Walker is now out. I do not believe that he wanted it. He did not do his homework. He was not ready to address national issues. He was in over his head.
It is a shame. He has a better record than any other governor in the country, and governors are the folks with executive experience. Moreover, he had an executive temperament. He could make a decision and stick with it, and he could win and win again in adverse circumstances.
But, like Rick Perry in 2008, he did not really, really want it, and he was not prepared. This is our loss — for it means that for the most part we are left with the big-talkers.
Walker lost my enthusiasm when he pandered on immigration and ethanol. Or maybe that wasn’t pandering, maybe he was just weak on those issues and I was distracted by his public-union-busting and his success fighting off the coordinated assaults of the extra-legal left. But I’d have still gladly supported him over ChrisCo (Bush, Christie, Rubio, Kasich – they’re all just different brands of cheap lard to me.)
However, I think Walker lost the casual voters, and then the donors, because he didn’t paint us a big picture. Tactical successes are great but he needed to frame them within a larger strategy for the country under his administration.
I’m fine with that.
It is not our loss. Our loss would be to select a candidate whose heart and head weren’t in the game. I have no time for feeling sorry for someone who couldn’t care enough to put himself forward urgently and with conviction. This is the presidency, you need more than just a resume to get the job. You need a bit of heart. And I never really got that from Walker during his whole tenure in his bid for the presidency.
I wonder if, early on, he thought the nomination was his to lose…causing him to be overly cautious? I initially thought he was an appealing candidate but was turned off by the pandering, which was at odds with his reputation for political courage from the WI union fights. He said some good things about immigration–my #1 issue–but later seemed to hedge and obfuscate, which I took to be the donors and consultants pulling back on his leash.
Maybe he’s too normal to be an effective presidential candidate?
And it should be added that by “solid conservative majority” one means that they are solidly conservative, not that it is a large majority.
More like one or two votes in the state senate.
Which is to say… leadership (i.e. Walker) is a large part of the reason that it has been solidly conservative. Not to mention that when he ran for governor he explicitly asked for that majority. He didn’t want to be a one-man show.
Would’ve done the same nationally. Oh well.
I disagree, Professor. Rahe. It wasn’t like Perry’s last-minute jump in 2012. I knew in 2013 he wanted to run. I’ve been listening to him for a few years now. Walker wanted to be president, and believes he knows what Republicans need to do to win. (In 2012, he sounded like he wanted to take over for Mitt Romney’s campaign manager. Might not have been a bad idea.)
He ran a brutal race for governor in 2010. Brutal budget fight in 2011, recall campaign in 2012, budget fight in 2013, intense re-election campaign in 2014, budget fight in 2015. He announced his presidential run the day after he signed the budget.
That takes a toll, and it showed. When in all that was he going to form a detailed opinion on immigration, for instance? He was serious about the issues. He had the first (so far only) Obamacare repeal plan on the table. But it was going to take time, and time was not given him.
ROFL!!!