Posted on 03/17/2015 10:38:33 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
On the evening of June 5, 2012, after he had been declared the winner of a historic recall election, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker hugged his friend Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus and took a call from presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Amid sobbing supporters, Walker’s wife, Tonette, pulled him aside and suggested he begin his victory speech by saying, “This is what democracy looks like!”
That phrase had been the rallying cry of Walker’s political opponents for months, as they marched around the state capitol in Madison and stalked the governor at his home. Following Walker’s announcement of his bold plan to eliminate many collective-bargaining provisions for most state and local government employees, protesters began occupying the capitol building, chanting loudly, and occasionally spitting on Republican legislators. The nation watched as Walker stared down organized labor, while unions attempted, unsuccessfully, to remove him from office.
On election night, Walker smiled as he considered turning the taunt around on the unions. “After hearing tens of thousands of people chanting that very phrase outside my window for months, it would have been enormously satisfying to deliver it,” he says in his new book, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge. But Walker decided not to twist the knife: “I wanted to use my speech as a chance to end the acrimony, and unite our state once again.”
(As Walker deliberated what to say, Rebecca Kleefisch, his irrepressible lieutenant governor, who had just survived a recall attempt herself, took the stage and immediately yelled, “This is what democracy looks like!”)
While he was waiting to speak, Walker says, he remembered a devotional reading on the “power of humility, the burden of pride.” But if, on election night, he had qualms about remaining humble, they seem to have subsided since then.
In Unintimidated (due out November 19 and co-written with Marc Thiessen), Walker strives for the delicate balance a rising politician must seek: He has to show readers he is genuine and down-to-earth, and at the same time explain that is was his preternatural personal strength that allowed him to do such extraordinary things.
Much of his fortitude he outsources to God, explaining that the collective-bargaining reform bill and the ensuing union attacks were part of the Lord’s plan. But unfortunately, God is not a Wisconsin voter (or at least we don’t know he is, as the state cannot yet compel its citizens to show a photo ID at the polling place), and Walker faced a steep hill in explaining his proposal to the electorate. Soon after the controversy began, his approval rating dipped to 37 percent. At one point, Time magazine declared him “Dead Man Walker.”
And this is why Walker deserves to have a sizable burden of pride. He pulled off a remarkable feat in a state that was both the first in the nation to allow public-sector collective bargaining and the birthplace of AFSCME. Unintimidated succeeds at summarizing the key challenges Walker faced, and he doesn’t hold back in criticizing his opponents. Rather than using tempered politician-talk, he rips the public-sector-union system as “corrupt,” characterizes the compulsory-dues framework as a “protection racket,” and bemoans the “lavish benefits” the unions have “extorted” from taxpayers over the years.
Walker’s attempt to correct these problems is what sent Wisconsin into a Hobbesian state of nature in early 2011, when hundreds of thousands of protesters descended on the state capitol in Madison, with thousands of them setting up shop in the statehouse and planning to stay for the duration. (“The place smelled like a Port-a-John,” Walker complains.) Walker provides harrowing details about the threats to him and his family and tells how SWAT teams had to be called in to retain control of the capitol building. (“It was like a scene out of Call of Duty,” Walker says, perhaps outing himself as a video-game enthusiast.) At one point, 14 Democratic state senators fled the state in order to block a vote on Walker’s plan.
But while he doesn’t pull his punches with organized labor, Walker saves his most stinging criticism for presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
After Walker’s big win on June 5, Romney tried to use the victory to bolster his own candidacy. President Obama, Romney said, “says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers.” He then asked: “Did he not get the message of Wisconsin?”
Yet Walker says it was Romney who completely misread the message of Wisconsin; it was Walker’s reforms — requiring public employees to begin paying into their pension accounts and requiring them to pay 12.6 percent of their health-insurance premiums — that actually saved teachers’ jobs. (Plus, police and firefighters were exempt from Walker’s law.) When he took office in January of 2011, Walker faced a budget deficit of over $3 billion; had his proposal failed, massive layoffs would have been unavoidable.
Further, Walker derides Romney for his attempt to pit “takers” against “makers,” citing Ronald Reagan to bolster his point. (As is the case with most modern Republican memoirs, Unintimidated mentions Reagan more often than Ernie’s autobiography would mention Bert.) “Reagan did not dismiss 47 percent of the country as a bunch of moochers,” Walker says, indicating a need to appeal to people who want “nothing more than to get off government assistance and find work.”
Walker’s critiques of Romney provide him a trampoline to elucidate what he believes are the lessons America can learn from Wisconsin. He offers familiar bromides, such as that “too many people in politics today spend their time trying not to lose instead of trying to do the right thing.”
As it happens, Walker’s chapter offering prescriptions for America closely mirrors the stump speech he has been delivering lately (including in — ahem — Iowa), but there’s a good reason for that: It is an effective speech, and he has the gravitas to deliver it. When Walker urges conservatives to show up in the inner city more often and spread the free-market message there, he knows it works because he has done it: In being elected and twice reelected Milwaukee County executive, he routinely won the City of Milwaukee’s Hispanic wards and overperformed in other majority-minority areas, where he talked of entrepreneurship and school choice. Walker recommends that conservatives talk more of “fairness” in order to avoid being accused of being tied to “big business” and “the rich.”
Attempts to soften the edges of conservatism and the GOP are cyclical; Peter Baker, in his new book Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, discusses how President George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” attempted to save Republicans from what Karen Hughes called the “grinchy old Republican” days of government shutdowns.
Yet Walker’s remedies demonstrate that conservatism is inherently compassionate, without needing an insulting catchphrase as a sales pitch. Given the hard line a small group of GOP leaders in Congress has recently taken, Walker is hoping it is time for Republicans nationally to take notice of someone who has demonstrated the ability to build consensus while sticking to his principles. Unintimidated is Scott Walker’s first book as an author; it is likely as well to be his first chapter as a national political figure.
— Christian Schneider is a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and covered the Wisconsin protests for NRO.
He hugged his friend (apparently that translates to “best bud”) and RNC chairman, who happens to be from his home state, after becoming the first governor in United States history to survive a recall attempt. DISQUALIFIED!
Scott Walker Under Fire for New Open Borders Amnesty Advocate Staffer Who Mocks Iowa
Since when do I have to move on when a candidate is close to the RNC’s Reince Prebus?
I like Ted Cruz at this point, but I’m not sold on him, but my liking him or disliking him has nothing to do with Walker and his reported friendship with Prebus.
What does it matter who I like or don’t like, if Walker is friends with Prebus?
Since when do we support GOPe friendly people? Since when do we usher people to the door, because they oppose the GOPe or a friend of the GOPe?
I urge you to post anything you like about Ted Cruz on any thread you like. I want to know every little detail. If he is friends with Reince Prebus, you better believe I want to know.
Nobody was more supportive ideologically with Walker during his efforts against the unions and recall. That does not mean I’m going to go all-in, without looking real hard at him.
My ability to be a friend or even an acquaintance of Reince Prebus would have ended the moment he started showing his true colors in Washington, D. C.
I expect to vote for people who can grasp the reason why.
There’s a long time until early 2016, so Walker has time to prove himself before then.
I object to starting to campaign for him openly here.
We’re going to have people fall in behind him because he was good on one or two issues. They MUST look at him in detail before they go all in.
My selection of the person I will vote for will take place over a year. It won’t be because someone posted an article today trying to represent Walker as someone he may or may not be.
IMO< this is just shilling for the Republican party.
It’s shameful.
Here is more about Liz Mair:
Gov. Scott Walker hires GOP strategist Liz Mair team for online outreach "....The announcement is part of a hiring spree for Walker, who’s presidential campaign-in-waiting has brought on veteran strategist Rick Wiley as campaign manager and signed up former Mitt Romney strategists Danny O’Driscoll and Wells Griffith. Walker has also lined up influential activists in early-voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire.
Mair has a history with Walker’s election machine: She led his online communication strategy during his recall election in 2012, when Democrats waged an aggressive, yet unsuccessful effort to remove Walker from office after he curbed the power of public sector unions in Wisconsin. Dan Blum, an associate with Mair’s group who also worked on the recall campaign, will also consult for the PAC. Blum, who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, also formerly handled rapid response for Republican Sen. Rob Portman’s campaign.
During her career in political advocacy, Mair has consulted with a wide range of Republican campaigns, including possible Walker rivals: In 2008 she directed online communications for the Republican National Committee. Two years later, she led online outreach efforts for Carly Fiorinia’s Senate candidacy in California. She has also consulted with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry."... Scott Walker Shows How Pro-Life Presidential Candidates Can Avoid the Media’s Abortion Trap ".............In short, Scott Walker’s performance on Fox News Sunday was a brilliant example of how to handle the media when it comes to speaking about the life issue, particularly in high profile interview segments. It shows the kind of skill any pro-life candidate needs to be successful in the present anti-life media environment, and other pro-life candidates would do well to study Walker’s example. "
I am an actual former Walker supporter who now realizes I was fooled, lied to, and used for my vote by him.
For me, a Walker presidency will create a high risk to me of losing my job to an illegal H1-B visa holder.
A Walker presidency will definitely target conservatives in America as he panders to the La Raza groups and grants 10s of millions of illegal invaders amnesty.
Walker won't stop the Reconquista of Wisconsin or reconquest when he is Govenor of Wisconsin, and he darn won't stop the Reconquista of America or reconquest when he is President of the United States!
What are the facts? I’m on the fence between Walker and Cruz - ideally we’d see them both on the same ticket. But is the key concern that Walker has friends like Priebus? Or is there more?
Just give it up already and please drop Queso-head Walker like a hot potato. Cruz is the best conservative in America and deep down you know it!
↑THIS!↑
Reince Priebus was at one time Wisconsin GOP Chairman, My Goodness.
You might have a point if Walker hired her as an adviser on immigration, which he didn’t. She is going to be a communications consultant, and she’s an excellent one at that. You do realize that Mair will be pushing Walker’s views and not the other way around? Congratulations are in order though, you have accomplished your goal of derailing this thread with off-topic spam.
In your own post you provide information that easily tosses Walker into high risk category for Conservatives, and you don’t even realize it.
The GOPe operative is BUSTED, once again.
A Conservative who is principled about their beliefs and the values they keep would want to know about Walker's predilection in surrounding himself with Jeb Bush-like pro-amnesty political attack dogs.
Elections have consequences.
Do you favor los Estados Unidos de América or the United States of America?
First let me explain why I am posting here.
Every dang election we have one person or another fool the people enough early on, to create a situation were a virtual mob mentality takes place of the forum.
Once that happens, you can’t talk a lick of sense to this group. Better people come along, or big problems arise with this person, but people have already cut off any ability to listen and make sense of anything. They are frozen in place. This is a very important election. We need to keep our eyes and ears open.
If Walker is proven to be the real deal over the upcoming six months or so, I may even back the guy. What I see right now, is someone trying to make him catch fire. I may be wrong but I think that someone is connected to the Republican party. She can read this and shoot that down if she likes. I’m not interested in misrepresenting her, but she was doing the same thing for Rick Perry in 2011, so it’s more than a same state thing going on. This causes me to think it’s party related.
You ask what the comparisons are, and I’ll be perfectly honest with my reply. I don’t know. I’m not all in for Cruz today. I’m not all out for Walker either. All I’m saying is that I want to look long and hard before I go all in, and I’m asking other forum participants to do the same thing.
Walker has done some very admirable things. I mean that. I do see a very large reason for concern, if he’s touted by Reince Priebus, and he is. In a post after this one, I’ll be linking in Priebus comments on him, and a political assessment regarding three Wisconson players that are now visible.
I appreciate your reasoned question. I wish I had a better answer. I don’t, so I’ll be honest with you.
Thank you.
I appreciate your comments for what they are. I have not seen evidence of this myself, so I am going to take a pass on agreeing with you.
You have a right to your own thoughts regarding him, and you may be much more accurate than I know. I am not comfortable with these charges, because I haven’t seen this side of Mr. Walker for myself.
Fair enough. I do think a candidate’s record is fair game, which, judging by your own posts, you would agree to.
And he may have been a decent one.
Today he’s one leader of the GOPe.
The GOPe is our enemy. They want open borders. They want a North American Union, which is essentially buttressed by open borders. They want our nation flooded with third world immigration and have no problem whatsoever if they come from Syria or any place else.
Part of the big problem of Boehner having no spine, is him being heavily influence by the GOPe to back off opposing Obama.
He rubber stamps Obama’s desires all too often. He isn’t being urged to do anything else.
The GOPe has become the go along to get along party.
I think we must oppose that.
If you’re a Conservative, you do too.
Yes I do. Thank you for your comments.
And what better way to do that than to drug test 'em?
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