Posted on 02/27/2015 4:47:42 AM PST by LeoMcNeil
Scott Walker spoke to the folks at the CPAC convention yesterday. He looked Presidential, he looked like someone who could win. His best line was “we celebrate our independence from government not our dependence on it.” He defended the rights of the unborn, outright by noting that Wisconsin no longer funds Planned Parenthood and more subtlety by including the unborn as worthy of protection while he rattled off a number of other basic groups to be protected. If nothing else Walker will provide a stark contrast to the whiny liberalism of the GOP establishment’s candidate Jeb Bush. The GOP can choose another moderate to liberal Bush or it can choose someone with an actual track record of successful conservative governance.
I’m not ready to endorse a candidate yet. Obviously there are a number of other conservative candidates out there that are intriguing. Ted Cruz being chief among them. Walker has something Cruz doesn’t have though: Experience managing an executive branch. After we elected a four year Senator in Barack Obama, the country may be a little leery of electing another one term Senator with limited political experience outside the Senate. Walker, on the other hand, has not only served as Governor of a decent sized state he’s also successfully managed the state government in a conservative manner. His record is pretty clear, he’s taken on the outdated unions and won. In a blue state no less. The results for taxpayers have been great. Wisconsin taxes are down $2 billion, schools are being run more efficiently. State employees are leaving unions in droves because they never really wanted to be in one in the first place.
Ted Cruz just doesn’t have that sort of resume. He also doesn’t have a track record of running successful campaigns. That isn’t to say Cruz hasn’t run a successful campaign, obviously he won the Senate race in Texas. It’s a littler easier though to win a Senate race as Republican in Texas than it is to run for Governor in Wisconsin. Three times in four years no less. This obviously isn’t a dispositive issue but in the very least Walker has been forced to run tough campaigns and he’s won them. If Walker is the GOP nominee, he may be the candidate best prepared to handle the onslaught of the liberal press and Hillary Clinton. Not to say Cruz cannot take these people on, he can. However there’s something to be said for campaign experience.
One issue people haven’t considered about Ted Cruz is his Senate replacement. Let’s say Cruz wins the GOP nomination and the White House. Who replaces him in the Senate? In other words, we conservatives have a terrific group of young conservative Senators who are moving towards making a difference in the upper chamber. Do we want to lose that sort of leader in the Senate? Especially so if we can find someone who can do an equal job in the White House. Scott Walker looks like he’s going to come pretty close to Cruz in terms of conservative governance. We need people like Cruz in the Senate, he’s potentially a future Republican leader. Can you imagine how much better the Senate would be without someone like Mitch McConnell leading it?
The most important thing for conservatives to do in the next year is line up behind one of the conservative candidates. This is what the moderates have been doing for years. They line up behind the chosen one, gain 40% of the votes in early states while the 60% of conservative votes get split between half a dozen barely indistinguishable candidates. This is how John McCain and Mitt Romney won. It’s how Jeb Bush will win if conservatives get into a Walker-Cruz-Paul-Palin battle. It doesn’t matter which of these people is the nominee, though obviously the first two are better choices. We just have to line up behind one of them. God forbid some of these candidates take one for the team and refuse to run. Right now Scott Walker is looking pretty good, we need to give him an extra long look over the next few months.
It’s best to know what’s true.
I think his views on the subject have changed over time. He seems to have supported some version of amnesty in the early 2000’s. Today he appears to oppose it in most cases. He hasn’t been entirely clear and that’s an issue that presumably he’ll have to address during the primary process.
I would caution conservatives not to discard any candidate over an inconsistent view on one issue. None of these men is perfect, not even Ted Cruz. If we nitpick at all of them, then we end up with 2012 where every conservative candidate was damned as a conservative heretic over one or two issues and we ended up with Mitt Romney as a result.
I agree with what you say. We must be open-minded. I’m watching Walker. But any candidate who follows the UN rather than our own laws, though, that is a deal breaker for me.
Will Ted Cruz Make A Good President? Leo McNeil ^ | March 24, 2015
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