New Brokered GOP Convention Savior Candidate:....Scott Walker?

by JASmius



Switch said it best in The Matrix



[For the benefit of all you skimmers out there, here again is the link to Josh Kraushaar's piece in National Journal]:

After Trump’s de­cis­ive de­feat in Wis­con­sin, it’s dif­fi­cult to see how any Re­pub­lic­an can clinch the nom­in­a­tion be­fore Clev­e­land. Trump needs to win an out­right ma­jor­ity of the vote in his home State of New York [more like run the table], sweep the North­east­ern States in April, win In­di­ana’s pivotal May 3rd primary [I wouldn't count on that], and fin­ish strong in del­eg­ate-rich Cali­for­nia [where he's only up by eight points]. Cruz needs to demonstrate that his Wis­con­sin mo­mentum trans­lates in­to the North­east, his most dif­fi­cult re­gion. John Kasich, who has no shot at win­ning a ma­jor­ity of del­eg­ates, simply needs to win some­where out­side of his home State to enter the con­ven­tion with some mo­mentum. The like­li­hood of stale­mate has nev­er been high­er.

Cruz is cur­rently laud­ing the breadth of his GOP sup­port — get­ting Jeb Bush and talk show host Mark Lev­in back­ing the same can­did­ate is one of his new fa­vor­ite talk­ing points — but he may soon find his new­found al­lies will be­come fair-weath­er friends if he can’t com­fort­ably cobble to­geth­er a ma­jor­ity of del­eg­ates at a con­ven­tion. Even some of the un­com­mit­ted del­eg­ates whom Cruz’s cam­paign helped elect have said they’d con­sider oth­er can­did­ates after a first bal­lot.

But for an­oth­er can­did­ate to take ad­vant­age of con­ven­tion chaos, it would take an out­sider who would be an ac­cept­able second choice for both Cruz and Trump sup­port­ers. Ry­an is too much of a Wash­ing­ton insider. Mitt Rom­ney is too close to the es­tab­lish­ment. Marco Ru­bio is dis­liked by too many Trump sup­port­ers. Walker, who per­formed the feat of cam­paign­ing for Cruz while avoid­ing cri­ti­cism of Trump, is one of the few Re­pub­lic­ans left who fits the bill. Don’t be shocked if the can­did­ate who played king­maker in the Wis­con­sin primary could end up be­com­ing king in Clev­e­land.

Except for that same nagging little problem of Walk not having earned a single vote or a single delegate.  Not that he couldn't or wouldn't have, of course - he did run for POTUS, for a couple of months last summer - but, tragically, he never caught fire nationally, largely due to the unforseeably terrible timing of jumping in in the Trumpmania cycle.  I was a hardcore Scott Walker fanatic - I may have been the first, or among the first few, voices of any size, shape, or stature to start talking up a Walker presidential candidacy way back in the fall of 2013.  He had everything - executive experience, proven record of conservative policy accomplishment, Tea Party street-cred of not just fighting the Left head-on but repeatedly kicking their asses - substance and a positive, sunny, optimistic, twinkle-in-the-eye style.  Ronald Reagan's ideology, updated for the twenty-first century, and his temperament, if not his personal charisma.  He should have been the next president of the United States, and definitely the consensus, hands-down choice for the GOP presidential nomination.

But Donald Trump f'd that all up.  And, therefore, Walk quickly ran out of money, the donors dried up and went elsewhere, and that was that.

Much as I wanted to see a President Walker, it ain't gonna happen this way.  Nor should it.  Nor will it.  It's almost as though Josh Kraushaar wasn't paying attention to what Walk did in the process of playing kingmaker in Wisconsin: He endorsed Ted Cruz.  You know, the man who has earned 6,263,349 Republican votes and 517 delegates and stands for the same things the Wisconsin governor does.

I'd like to think guys like Kraushaar are just trolling for column fodder and comment flame during this current month with a single primary.  Because if they really believe this "establishment white knight" crapola could ever happen and would ever be accepted by the actual delegates, who aren't stupid and do know what's at stake with Trump's attempted hostile takeover of the party, then they're way bigger morons than I want to give them credit for being.