Enough with the bleeping undercard, here comes the main event:
America needs new, fresh leadership, with big, bold ideas from outside of Washington to actually get things done. In Wisconsin, we didn't nibble around the edges; we enacted big, bold reforms, took power out of the hands of the big government special interests, and gave it to the hardworking taxpayers, whose lives are better because of it. We fought - and we won. In the Republican field, there are some who are good fighters, but they haven't won those battles; there are others who have won elections but haven't consistently taken on the big fights. We showed you can do both. Now I'm running for President to fight and win for the American people. Without sacrificing our principles, we won three elections in four years in a "blue" State. We did it by leading. Now we need to do the same thing for America. It's not too late. We can make our country great again. [emphases added]
In the late '80s, there was a pro wrestler that burst upon the scene in the old NWA (later WCW) under the ring name Lex Luger (Larry Pfohl). His gimmick was that he had all the tools - looks, build, strength (all legit), wrestling ability (not so much) - to be a champion. His nickname? "The Total Package". Which led to being shortened to "Package" before that term came to be known for something else, which probably helps explain why it was eventually dropped.
Even in kayfabe, Lex Luger was not the "Total Package". But in the realm of politics, Scott Walker most definitely is. He's got it all: ample executive experience, Tea Party "street cred," proven record of conservative policy accomplishment, authentic "everyman" personality, Reaganesque sunny, can-do, dare I say Gibbsesque optimism, demonstrated electability beyond the GOP base, and the Left fears him like no other 'Pubbie. Walk is not only the antithesis of Barack Obama, he's the antithesis of Donald Trump. He's like Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson (who played at the University of....Wisconsin): Some people remain inexplicably unimpressed with him, but all he does is win - on Election Day and beyond. He's Ted Cruz with executive experience and sound judgement; he's Rand Paul with executive experience and a foreign policy that won't get us all killed; he's Marco Rubio with executive experience, Christian values, and an enforced border; he's Jeb Bush with a transreversed brain, a surname that isn't an electoral toe-tag, and a lawnmower; he's Chris Christie without the appetite and with an oral restrictor plate; he's Bobby Jindal with a pulse and extra-terranean popularity. Shall I go on?
And just like Ronald Reagan before him, this has the media utterly flummoxed:
The son of a conservative small-town minister who showed his son how to be “pastoral,” Walker has mastered the art of governing in a manner that mobilizes the party faithful while campaigning in a way that doesn’t scare off moderates, independents, and even some Democrats. This misdirection has been the source of much of Walker’s political success. [emphasis added]
Note the cognitive dissonance. Conservatives are supposed to be "scary"; conservatism can't possibly be popular or populist; so Governor Walker must be fooling the voters, because if they knew how he was really governing they would never vote for him. And it's the media's self-appointed mission to "expose" this "misdirection".
Yet Walk just keeps on winning. And the press just can't understand it.
“Even as he cut that abortion ad, there isn’t a single pro-life voter in the state who suddenly thinks he’s pro-[abortion],” said Matt Batzel, executive director of American Majority, a conservative activist group. “They know he shares their views.”
Batzel, who is based in Wisconsin and has had a front-row seat for Walker’s biggest political battles, added: “He has legislated very conservatively. But when you look at his tone and how he wins elections, it’s different. And that’s a needle he’s successfully been able to thread in Wisconsin.” …
i.e. He's not angry. He's not a blithering fusillade of "red meat". He has a leader's temperment. Which, judging from how some Tea Partiers are following Donald Trump over the metaphorical cliff like Legion in the herd of pigs, is evidently a TP strike against him, even though anger doesn't sell in national elections.
Anybody remember "Yes! We! Can!"?
“You start in Iowa and lock up conservatives, because if you don’t do that, none of the rest matters,” said one longtime Walker adviser, who requested anonymity to discuss campaign strategy. “It’s much easier to move from being a conservative to being a middle-of-the-road moderate later on.”
Conservatives, of course, ought already to be locked up. But it is not about being "a middle-of-the-road moderate later on," at any other time, or at all; it's about having a moderate temperment. Scott Walker is a "hardcore conservative" who doesn't scare people. He's got no skeletons in his closet. He's WYSIWYG - what you see is what you get. He's the twenty-first-century Reagan.
And that does not fit the media's conservative stereotype, just as it apparently doesn't fit the Tea Party's profile of what they want in a Republican nominee.
Which means the latter have to make a choice: Do they want a candidate who will splatter opposition (and allied) blood all over the walls and lose, or are they willing to back a man who won't provide that level of insatiable catharsis but can and will win and deliver on policy in 2017 and beyond?
As I wrote almost six months ago:
As I always say, my Tea Party friends, politics is about more than just "Fight! Fight! Fight!" It's about winning elections, without which the rest of our cause is pointless. And winning elections means winning the votes of more than just the people in our particular sociocultural "bubble". It means reaching out, grabbing, and reeling in our direction people who don't care about politics, know nothing about public policy, aren't ideologues, are ignorant, but can be attracted by a candidate who is real, who is authentic, and who is, above all, optimistic and can-do. Most people don't know what it takes to make the trains run on time, but they do want them to run. Scott Walker has been making Wisconsin's trains run on time against all attempts by the Left to disrupt them for the past four years, while at the same time neither shaming people for, nor haranguing people to, rid(e)(ing) them. It's not [just] that he isn't a "scary" conservative, but that he's a likable conservative who is eminently salable as being "on your side". And remember, a derivative of that sappy sentiment is most, if not all, of why the 51% chose Barack Obama (again) over Mitt Romney two years ago.
But that will matter little if TPers don't figure out that they need to unite behind a single candidate that can actually win....
If I'm wrong and 2012 wasn't America's Rubicon of dissolution and destruction - and I hope and pray I am - then might I suggest that 2016 is all the more precisely that "windmill" of no return. And that being the case, we should most definitely, after cycle after cycle of Bushes and Doles and McCains and Romneys, etc., etc. etc., not look this "gift Gipper" in the mouth. Because we won't get another.
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