Free Republic

"...“Sometimes it takes a little while to warm up to a Midwesterner,” said Zee Homoki,an Aiken resident who came the Columbia luncheon with her husband, Steve, an Aiken city councilman. But Homoki liked Walker’s references to his upbringing, his focus on national security issues and his “deep love of country.”“He can appeal to a larger section of the Republican Party,” she said. Her husband agreed. “He might be the guy to actually combine the tea party types and establishment types,” he said. “We need somebody from outside the Washington establishment,someone with new ideas and the perspective of Middle America.”Some saw...

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has signed a measure freeing workers in his state from having to pay union dues if they want to keep their jobs, naturally enough upsetting labor honchos wanting to grab every worker nickel they can. Not the least of them: Randi Weingarten, chief of the American Federation of Teachers. “Scott Walker fails the test of common decency and common sense,” said Weingarten, who represents teacher unions that commonly abet youths in failing standardized tests. Her comments came after Walker signed a bill making his state the 25th to enact a right-to-work law that does exactly...

Nationally syndicated conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, founder of the website Twitchy, tells Breitbart News that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker—a potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate—needs to be vetted. She also says Walker’s “problems” run much deeper than the decision to hire—then quickly let go of—pro-amnesty communications aide Liz Mair, who had taken shots at Iowa. “Scott Walker has much bigger problems than the ill-considered hiring and firing of one D.C. operative,” Malkin said in an email. "What does he really stand for and is he fully equipped to bear the slings and arrows of his enemies on a national and global...

MADISON, Wis. — Could it be a case of John Doe collateral damage? At least one target of Wisconsin’s politically charged John Doe investigation — whose home was raided and whose personal information was seized — tells Wisconsin Reporter they’re a victim of identity theft. The individual spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe comes with a strict gag order. Targets who speak publicly about the John Doe could go to jail. Wisconsin Reporter obtained a copy of an Internal Revenue Service letter alerting the subject to the identify theft problem. The letter, titled, “Identity Verification Service,” advises that...

Congress’s two top tax chairmen warned President Obama on Wednesday not to claim unilateral executive powers to raise taxes on his own, saying it violates the Constitution and ruins chances for a lasting deal. Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said they were troubled by White House’s announcement earlier this month that Mr. Obama is “very interested” in exploring what options he has to raise taxes without going through Congress. “This would be a mistake, both constitutionally and politically,” the two lawmakers said, adding...

Scott Walker is making some controversial personnel decisions—but voters in Colorado don’t seem that upset. Even after his campaign made news in Iowa, the Wisconsin governor remained the far-and-away leader in the Centennial State, according to an overnight flash poll conducted by VoterGravity.com.One-third of Coloradans in this survey picked Walker. That’s better than double the support for second place Jeb Bush. The former Florida governor, busy raising campaign cash for his PAC, earned 14 percent support. Dr. Ben Carson was right behind, at 12 percent.The survey is comprehensive. It includes only people who are extremely likely voters—those who’ve cast ballots...

A U.S. postal employee thought it would be easier to throw away mail that included Republican Party campaign flyers to soothe his sore shoulder than to actually deliver them. Rickey Krueger, a mail carrier for the Neenah, Wisconsin post office, was convicted last week in U.S. District Court of “mishandling the mail.”

<p>UPDATED: Tuesday, March 17, 2015---9:05 a.m. KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) -- Police say the Kenosha officer who shot and killed an armed man had just returned to duty after shooting another man about two weeks ago.</p> <p>Authorities have identified the 26-year-old fatally shot on Saturday as Aaron Siler, of Kenosha. Police say he had armed himself with a weapon before he was shot by Officer Pablo Torres. Siler was wanted on a felony warrant and led police on a vehicle chase and a foot pursuit before he was shot.</p>

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — An official at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library on Monday sought to clarify her account of how Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker came to handle a family Bible the late president used when taking the oath of office. Library registrar Jennifer Torres said a "simple misunderstanding" left the wrong impression that Walker personally sought to hold the book. A spokeswoman for the Reagan Foundation says Walker's retelling of the moment is correct. Walker told the story of having his picture taken with the Bible at a 2013 Reagan Day dinner in Milwaukee. He described in...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker made another massive misstep on Monday, hiring Liz Mair of Mair Strategies to handle communications and social media for his campaign-in-waiting. Mair’s support for amnesty for illegal aliens, wide-open-borders immigration policies, and public advocacy for the Senate “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill is sure to dog Walker in Iowa, South Carolina, and other early presidential states. During the Senate Gang of Eight bill fight, Mair very publicly and very aggressively promoted the amnesty bill—pushing it to media and making the case for the need for it over and over again. She claims her advocacy was done...

MADISON (WKOW) -- Two executives who run a Texas-based sand mining company - which paid $52,500 in fines to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in 2014 - are major backers of Gov. Scott Walker's political action committee Our American Revival (OAR), according to CNN. In an article detailing several big money donors published on Monday, CNN lists Bob Rasmus and James Whipkey - who run Hi-Crush Partners - as two of OAR's major supporters in Texas. In August of 2014, 27 News reported the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) ordered Hi-Crush Partners to pay $52,500 in July for...

Generally, we eschew fantasies imagining what various people would say in favor of analysis of what they actually have said. But Jennifer Rubin’s Washington Post column laying out a scenario for a presidential debate between Scott Walker and Hillary Clinton is just too much fun to ignore. Read the whole thing, but here is an opening excerpt: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/03/15/what-would-walker-vs-clinton-be-like/ Out walks Clinton and Walker. They shake hands and Walker offers his arm as they walk over to the podiums. The image of a boy scout walking a senior citizen across the street comes to mind. Throughout the debate, she calls him...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is on an ambitious mission this spring to scoop up major GOP donors ahead of a likely presidential run and send the early message that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush doesn’t have a monopoly on the country’s deep-pocketed Republicans — and his backers say his plan is working. So far the expedition has been successful enough that Republicans not involved with his political effort have noticed, and several GOP operatives in Bush’s orbit conceded to CNN it’s clear a substantial chunk of GOP financiers have taken a liking to him. Walker’s PAC, Our...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Getting older changes a guy, President Barack Obama says, and he admits he's getting crankier. "Next week I'm signing an executive order to get off my lawn," Obama joked Saturday night at the Gridiron Club and Foundation's annual dinner. On top of that, the nation's graying chief executive says he's having trouble now with his morning cup of joe. "Coffee really disagrees with me these days," he says, "which is why John Boehner just invited coffee to address the joint House."

CONCORD, N.H. — 
Republican upstart Scott Walker yesterday was embraced by a rapturous crowd of hundreds of Granite Staters, who roared appreciation for his red-meat foreign and 
domestic policy views — as he hinted he will be making his candidacy official. “We’ll be back many more times to New Hampshire,” he promised. Walker’s two-day visit came on a swing of early primary states: He was in Iowa last weekend and is headed to South Carolina next. He used his one public appearance at Concord High School to 
regale the crowd with tales of his humble upbringing, to blast Common Core...

LIVE STREAM Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was in New Hampshire Saturday as he continues to ponder a possible run for president. Walker is set to speak at the Christa McAuliffe Auditorium at Concord High School around 11:45 a.m. The event is a grassroots training for Walker's possible run for the White House. WMUR.com will stream the event live when it happens. Walker will be a guest on WMUR's CloseUP on Sunday at 10 a.m.

Just nine weeks on the job, Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel is already counting off the number of lawsuits he will see come across his desk. The state’s chief legal officer expects to see court action over the right-to-work law, the school accountability bill and drug testing of public assistance recipients, if the Republican-supported measures go into law. “I think that we are going to be very busy,” Schimel said at a March 4 Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce conference in Madison. Schimel, a Republican, said it?s something that he will savor. “I am going to enforce the law the way...

EVERY talking head in the United States has spent the last week prattling on about Hillary Clinton’s emails.Fair enough. The former Secretary of State violated government rules in an apparent effort to keep her correspondence safe from scrutiny. That’s no small matter. But in the meantime, another politician has come from nowhere to dethrone Jeb Bush as the frontrunner for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. His name’s Scott Walker.A few months ago, Walker was an obscure underdog with little more than an outside chance of becoming the nominee. Now he’s being seriously considered for the most important job on the...

If Walker remains the most likely conservative to win the Republican nomination, then other conservative contenders will find their support and contributions going to Walker. As the race begins to boil down to Walker or Bush, conservatives will have an increasingly simple choice. The only thing that might derail Scott Walker is if he seems to be unelectable. Yet Scott Walker is the only governor in American history to have ever won three elections in four years, and that in Wisconsin. The most recent Marist poll shows Scott Walker running neck and neck with Hillary Clinton, and it shows Scott...

Urbandale, Iowa - Scott Walker is running for president, but he can’t say that just quite yet. “I hate the word ‘explore,’ ” he tells a group of activists at a private meeting in the strip mall offices of Our American Revival, the political organization through which Walker is exploring a presidential bid. Walker says that lawyers tell him he has to use that word when discussing his “likely campaign” in order to avoid running afoul of campaign finance rules. In case there’s any doubt about how likely that campaign is, Walker concludes his remarks by saying, “We’re going to beat...