Scott Walker, along with Ted Cruz and perhaps a handful of others on the Right, understands the pernicious nature of the kind of “bipartisanship” that has give us the likes of Poppy and W. Bush, and is currently exemplified in the current entitled scion, Jeb. It’s a terrible, undemocratic idea:
The town hall attendee asked for the microphone to pose this question to newly announced presidential candidate Scott Walker: Americans are fed up with the partisan gridlock in Washington, so what would he do as president to “end the partisanship and parochialism that is really stifling this great country”?
Walker is best-known for fighting Democrats, labor unions and liberal activists in Wisconsin, where he is the purple state’s polarizing governor. Many Democrats feel like Walker has bulldozed over them and ignored their concerns in pushing his conservative agenda. Many Democratic lawmakers in Madison are so angered by the governor that they have difficulty making it through a budget hearing, press conference or even a casual coffee without launching into a frustrated tirade about everything he has done wrong in their state. Walker’s announcement immediately prompted criticism from prominent Democrats, something he has bragged about on the campaign trail.
So here’s how Walker answered that town hall question: “As I talk to people across this country — not just the Republican caucus voters and primary voters but to people in general — what people are frustrated with more so than that, I think it’s elevated higher, is they’re frustrated particularly with Washington not being able to get anything done.”
Walker said his secret to winning three elections in four years, including a controversial recall election, is that he not only carried nearly all Republicans, but he also won over independent voters. Elsewhere, Walker has also said that he won over some “discerning Democrats.”
“What I think people are hungry for from their leaders in Washington — or the lack of leadership in Washington — is they want people who just tell them what they’re going to do and then they go off and do it,” Walker said.
The Trump boomlet (which eventually will peter out) speaks exactly to that sense of frustration, just as the Buchanan and Perot boomlets did before it. Still, every normal American feels these days like he is living in an insane asylum of shadow over substance; of words and gestures and “nuance,” in which just about every politician turns out to be a self-aggrandizing, lying weasel. And they’re right. Maybe Walker will turn out to be one as well. But up to this point, his track record speaks for itself. Which is more than can be said of just about every other candidate in the race so far.
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