Has Walker Peaked Too Soon?

That’s what Jonah Goldberg thinks:

It’s a bigger problem than it might seem. Walker planned on defining himself to the country on his timetable. With that plan in ashes, he’s facing a liberal news corps and a Republican field of competitors hell-bent on defining Walker if he won’t. From the media, that means lots of questions about President Obama’s religion, Walker’s views on evolution and other ridiculous gaffe hunts.

Walker has been “punting” — his word — on such questions, but also on more serious topics. That is a fine tactic when few are paying attention. Other candidates have been punting on various issues too, but no one knows or cares because they aren’t the front-runner. When you’re in the spotlight, punting stops being a way to avoid giving an answer and instead it becomes the answer.

Walker is in danger of being the guy known for not having a good — or any — answer to tough questions. That’s particularly poisonous for him, given that he is running on leadership and truth-telling.

Reading that, the first thing to pop into my mind was Allahpundit’s smart piece from Wednesday, explaining that Emailgate just won’t make any difference:

The point about how early it is in the campaign and consequently how little people will remember about this by election day 2016 is right on. A few righties on Twitter yesterday were kicking around the theory that Team Hillary exposed the private e-mail account themselves, just so that they could get this out there now, take their beating for a week, and then let the media forget about it. I doubt that’s right — if they wanted to leak this, they wouldn’t have handed the credit for it to Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi committee — but they would have leaked it eventually, likely sooner than later, knowing that voters have short memories about most scandals. That’s especially true for Bill and Hillary, whose brand already has plenty of scandal built in. If you vote for Her Majesty in 2016, you do so with absolute assurance that her administration will be one ethical clusterfark after another because that’s who the Clintons are and that’s how they roll. If you’re okay with that then by definition you’re okay with her conducting America’s diplomacy off the books. If you’re not okay with that, and you shouldn’t be, then you probably gave up on the Clintons sometime around 1995. The only reason there’s a bipartisan flavor to the current outrage over her e-mail corruption rather than unified wagon-circling on the left is because there’s still hope among progressives that Elizabeth Warren can be convinced to run. They’ll add some blood in the water if they think it might attract Warren. Once she’s definitely out, though, they’re out of the Clinton ethics-watching business too.

Here we have a genuine scandal involving a presidential contender who broke the damn law, committed what is arguably a felony as Secretary of State, which is just the most recent in a career built on lies, scandal, insider trading, character assassination, and ready foreign walking money. And yet Allahpundit is almost certainly correct in his estimation.

In Walker’s case the “scandal” is that he failed to have properly canned answer for a Complicit Media whose only genuine interest in Republicans is how best to make them look bad. And yet Jonah is almost certainly correct in his estimation. I’d also add that even if Walker’s missteps (ha!) don’t actually derail his nomination, the press will make sure this non-scandal constantly dogs him all the way to Election Day.

While you ponder just how rigged this game is for anyone but Democrats, I’ll leave you with a line of questioning which the Complicit Media would never bother Hillary with, as she proceeds unmolested to her coronation.

Truth: after Hillary 'homebrew server' E-mail revelation, it must be taken as ASSUMED that hostile foreign intel had access to her e-mail.

— Jeff B@AoSHQDD (@EsotericCD) March 4, 2015