Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin "suspended" his presidential race yesterday, becoming the second talented governor to drop out. The first was former Texas governor Rick Perry.
Walker had an amazing record in Wisconsin, having taken on the public sector unions and won and survived a recall vote that had liberals writing his political obituaries prematurely.
I guess it's fair to say that, if Tim Pawlenty, another mid-western governor with a solid record, who didn't have staying power, broke hearts in the last Republican presidential, Scott Walker did it this time.
Walker left with a plea that other candidates who don't have a clear path to victory will follow suit and leave the race so that GOP primary voters will go to a candidate with conservative positions and not Donald Trump, whom Walker called only "the frontrunner" and did not mention by name. (Trump is definitely the front-runner but a new poll shows Carly Fiorina moving up to second place.)
Former senator Tom Coburn, whose presence in the Senate is sorely missed, said at the outset of the campaign season that Walker was “not ready for primetime in my opinion.” He obviously wasn't, but he is young and didn't have an "oops" moment that will be hard to overcome, as Perry did in his first outing, and so it is possible that he could have another go at the presidency in four to eight years.
Noah Rothman of the Commentary blog had for my money the best take on why Walker failed. A nugget:
What couldn’t be accomplished in three years by an army of Democrats and all the money and muscle big labor could muster, the Republican primary voting base achieved in three months. But while it might be tempting to blame the Walker campaign’s implosion on the rise of Trump and political media’s myopic focus on the celebrity candidate, this would be a mistake. Like Rick Perry, Walker is primarily to blame for his collapse.
…
At the dawn of 2015, Walker looked like the candidate to beat. He had just emerged victorious from his third statewide victory and looked set to benefit from the various fundraising committees and PACs that were setting up operations in preparation for a presidential bid. Walker’s team had tapped the veteran campaign strategist, Rick Wiley, to manage his eventual bid. But the strength of Walker’s organization was undermined by the imperceptible weaknesses of the candidate.
Walker was embroiled in two relatively manufactured controversies early in the year. In London, Walker was asked whether he believed in evolution, a question he answered by simply saying he would “punt.” Walker took a similar approach to a ham-fisted press effort to generate controversy when he replied, “I don’t know” to a questioner who asked if the Wisconsin governor believed that Barack Obama was a Christian. Neither of these questions was valid. The fact that Walker’s refusal to answer the inquiry about Obama’s faith led to the same level of controversy that would have erupted if he had replied in the negative and suggests that a scandalous outcome was preordained. Still, these were ominous portents. It was Walker who declined to take a strong position, even one of frustration with the questions to which he was being subjected. This would turn out to be prologue to a series of embarrassing walk-backs from the candidate.
The headlines announcing yet another policy reversal on Walker’s part soon became disconcertingly routine. “Scott Walker denies flip-flop on ethanol,” Politico declared in March. “Scott Walker’s complete immigration reversal,” the Daily Caller’s Jamie Weinstein observed in April. By July, Walker was reversing his reversal on immigration reform. “I’m not going nativist. I’m pro-immigration,” Walker allegedly told Heritage Foundation economist and supporter Stephen Moore according to a New York Times report via Jonathan Martin headlined “Forget what I said.”
“Scott Walker’s Many Answers on Gay Rights,” The Daily Beast noted. “Scott Walker stumbled over his own prior comments Wednesday, saying that when he called on the Boy Scouts to reinstate a ban on gay leaders because it ‘protected children,’ he meant the ban protected them from media scrutiny,” a July dispatch in Politico revealed.
At a certain point, it’s not them; it’s you.
I was irritated at Walker when he refused to address a question immigration, saying he would answer it after the border is secured. Since we have been talking about securing the border for several decades now, that apparently meant he didn't intend to answer the question ever.
On the other hand, it would be nice if Dr. Ben Carson had not answered a question on whether a Muslim could be president. No Muslim is running for president but now we find the campaign embroiled in the question anyway. Of course, the Constitution forbids a religious test, and Carson should have remembered that and cited it and moved on. Now, we're hopelessly mired in a pointless discussion of what the good doctor actually meant, with CAIR smelling fundraising opportunities.
I rarely jump to the defense of Donald Trump, who certainly doesn't need it from me, but I thought he did give the guy who asked him a Muslim question the polite brush off–it's rare for Trump to be polite in brushing somebody off, but he did this time. It wasn't enough. The media is furious that Trump didn't give the man a lecture. The media has replayed a clip of 2008 GOP nominee John McCain being rude to a little old lady who asked him a Muslim question. Take that, you ignorant white-haired lady! President McCain certainly won endless praise for putting this white-haired woman in her place. Oh, wait–even though he pleased the media, he didn't actually win, did he? I hope all GOP candidates are rehearsing for ridiculous but inevitable Muslim questions. Oh, and evolution–that's gonna come up, too.