Dispatch from the campaign of the most overrated politician in America
by digby
I have been saying for months that Scott Walker is just another manifestation of the political class'bizarre obsession with finding a great Republican leader from the upper Mid-West and have characterized him as the most overrated politician in America.
Byron York seems to have noticed the problem:
[A] huge part of Walker's appeal right now: He seems to be the Republican candidate who has the best chance of connecting with the millions of middle-class voters who have drifted away from the GOP in recent elections. And for that reason, Walker looks like the man who can attract almost everyone in the Republican camp — social, economic, and national security conservatives — in addition to those disaffected voters. That's a huge plus for Walker and, along with his impressive record in Wisconsin, is the reason he has shot to the first tier of the Republican race in recent weeks.
At the same time, Walker could be headed for trouble with the establishment, Washington-based wing of his party. Look for GOP insiders to begin whispering, and then saying out loud, that Walker needs to raise his game if he is going to play on the national stage. On the one hand, they'll have a point — Walker needs to come up with clear, crisply-expressed positions on a variety of national and international issues. On the other hand, Walker's way-outside-the-Beltway method of expressing himself might resonate with voters in primary and caucus states more than Washington thinks.
For example, in our conversation Saturday, I asked Walker what Republicans in Washington should do in the standoff over funding the Department of Homeland Security. "Not just Republicans, I think the Congress as a whole needs to find a way to fund homeland security going forward," Walker answered. He explained that he recognized the concerns lawmakers have about giving up their ability "to push back on the president's questionable, if not illegal, actions." Walker noted that he was part of the states' lawsuit against Obama's action. "I think they're right that the president is wrong," Walker told me, "but I also think we've got to make sure that homeland security isn't compromised."
After a little more along those lines, I said I was still a little unclear on where Walker stood. Should Republicans stand firm on not funding Obama's unilateral action on immigration, or should they go ahead and fund the Department of Homeland Security without regard to what Obama has done? Here is what Walker said:
I think they have to figure out some way to have the bridge to continue to fund homeland security but in a way that doesn't remove their ability to come back sometime in the not too distant future if the court rules or if the administration changes how they do this action in a way that could be upheld in court. They need to have the power of the purse string to offer a counter to that.
What does that mean, exactly? It's not entirely clear. On one hand, it appeared Walker was adopting the time-honored stance of the governor who stands outside the squabbling of both parties in Washington — a tactic that last worked quite well for George W. Bush in 2000. He'll appeal to more voters by not getting stuck in the Washington mud.
On the other hand, maybe Walker just hadn't thought it through very carefully. Certainly some parts of his performance before the Club for Growth led observers to suspect that he has not really dived into a number of big issues — not just foreign policy, but domestic as well — that will serve as tests for presidential candidates in coming months.
He doesn't know what he's talking about that much is clear. He has a flair for the wingnut radio dogwhistle because that's what he knows. But at this point the Big Money Boyz have to be wondering whether or not it makes sense to put their money on this guy. This isn't 2000 --- they have a very uphill climb even with a very good candidate. This guy isn't it.
No one expects a governor to have dived deeply into international affairs this early in the race, but Walker is definitely a work in progress. In recent weeks, for example, he has cited his command of the Wisconsin National Guard as evidence of national security experience, and in Palm Beach on Saturday, he pointed to Ronald Reagan's 1981 firing of the air traffic controllers as "the most significant foreign policy decision of my lifetime" — a decision made, in case anyone missed the point, by "a president who was previously a governor."
Walker's comparison set off a lot of debate over whether the air traffic control firings, as consequential as they were, really supported the point Walker was trying to make. Whatever the case, Walker insisted that "Foreign policy is something that's not just about having a Ph.D or talking to Ph.Ds. It's about leadership." In our conversation, he said he has gathered together advisers — some of whom do have Ph.Ds — and is working on foreign policy questions.
Still, all that has led to some feelings of unease among policy experts and Republican insiders that Walker, for all his outward popularity, might be headed for difficulties over the substance of policy.
Yah think?
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