Charles P Pierce - Watching Scotty Blow, Cont'd: Why Singing Grandmas Are Like ISIS

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It's easy being a goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin when you can cower in your office, hide behind your capitol police force, have people with inconvenient signs or singing inconvenient songs hauled off in restraints, handpick your audiences, make up O'Reillyish tall tales of your time in the combat zones of Oconomowoc and Pewaukee, and are blessed with a pet legislature full of people who are even further off the right edge of the world than you are. But, Scotty, when other conservatives are saying you went too far at CPAC -- which is a standard that, until yesterday, I thought utterly impossible to meet -- well, that's welcome to NFL football, lad.

In case you missed it, here's what Marquette's most prominent drop-out since the late Maurice Lucas had to say yesterday at the annual festival of bowties and entitlement on the banks of the Potomac.

"If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world," said Walker, wearing his sleeves rolled up, referring to his high-profile face-off with public-employee unions.

Breathtaking, isn't it? He didn't "take on" anyone. He was the invisible man when 100,000 of his constituents came to call. He did everything he could to suppress the free speech rights of said constituents. And, with the abject cowardice and buck-passing that has marked his entire public career, Walker trotted out a sacrificial spokes-drone to "clarify" what he meant when he compared the chanting of middle-school teachers to bloodthirsty barbarism.

Walker aide Kirsten Kukowski issued a statement Thursday clarifying his earlier comments, saying: "Governor Walker believes our fight against ISIS is one of the most important issues our country faces. He was in no way comparing any American citizen to ISIS. What the governor was saying was when faced with adversity he chooses strength and leadership. Those are the qualities we need to fix the leadership void this White House has created."

Anybody that was in and around Madison in those days knows how laughable Walker's claim to "strength and leadership" during that time is on its face. He was the invisible man, using outside money and the Capitol Police as his shield and buckler. (Give Chris Christie this much. When he screwed the firefighters of New Jersey out of their pensions, he did it to their face.) And any fair reading of what he said yesterday does not sustain Ms. Kukowski's explanation. He knew exactly what he was doing.

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http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a33382/watching-scotty-blow-contd-why-singing-grandmas-are-like-isis/