How the Wisconsin media failed to warn us about Scott Walker

[riversedge]

http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/purple-wisconsin/325067841.html


How the Wisconsin media failed to warn us about Scott Walker


By Jimmy Anderson
Sept. 6, 2015


Scott Walker has had a rough few weeks. He has fallen precipitously in the polls while bumbling from one gaffe to the next. On immigration, he’s gone from supporting reform to not supporting reform to amending the Constitution to get rid of birthright citizenship to the next day saying that he’s refusing to take a stand on the issue (HOW UNINTIMIDATED) to the next day going back on getting rid of birthright citizenship. As an Iowa Republican put it, “He’s been on all three sides of every two-sided issue.”

All of this culminated with Walker’s painfully stupid idea to build a wall along our Canadian border. Rand Paul called Walker’s idea “pretty dumb.” It was so outlandish that even Toronto’s crack smoking ex-Mayor Rob Ford described it as off-the-wall. When Rob Ford thinks you have a bad idea, that's really saying something.




"I don’t think Walker has a chance down there," – crack enthusiast and former mayor Rob Ford.



And of course, just a couple days later, Walker backed off his desire to wall off the Canadians.

He’s also said some pretty dumb things on foreign policy. He compared Act 10 protesters to ISIS, called Reagan’s union busting “the most significant foreign policy decision of my lifetime,” insinuated that the vast majority of Muslims are extremists, and, in a move that has been described as nonsensical and silly, called for President Obama to cancel his meeting with the Chinese president.

His posturing is particularly hypocritical given that he visited with the Chinese president in 2013, but I do give him the benefit of the doubt. He probably only just learned about things like “currency manipulation” and “electronic espionage” and “foreign-policy” over these last few months. Worldly, Walker is not.

From what we’ve seen, it hasn’t taken much to get Walker to stumble over himself and that makes sense. At his core, he’s a politician without conviction who just sticks his finger in the air and mindlessly runs in whatever direction the wind blows, contradictions be damned. He is the boiled down essence of everything we dislike about politicians: he’s dishonest, unscrupulous, phony, manipulative, and power-hungry..................

[DirkGently]

1. Walker reminds me of Rick Scott here in Florida.

Both seem 100% dedicated to using government solely as a means of enriching business interests.

Both seem contemptuous of education and labor, to the point of hatred.

Both embrace anti-science ideology, but stumble over trying to defend it.

Both are generally terrible off-script and often revert to repeating the same phrases over and over or just plain deer-in-the-headlights freezing up.

Both seem to resent any public intrusion into their lives as ... public servants?

And yet both are high-profile elected political leaders in the United States of America.

Rick Scott has his own money (courtesy of his former company's record-setting Medicare fraud) but Walker appears to be wholly owned by the Kochs or whatever other billionaire is running him this week.

They both seem to regard public office as a private business endeavor, where the whole goal is simply to extract public funds for themselves and their allies.

Not a new thing, for sure, but these guys are almost pure about it.

And both seem kind of stupid, not just in their ideologies, but actually not very bright.

[katmondoo]

2. Both dumb and scary looking

[AllyCat]

3. I beg to differ

I think Walker is scary and dumb-looking

[AllyCat]

4. And these arseholes endorsed him

I'm glad to see the Journal Sentinel change course, as has the Wisconsin State Journal. But they propped him up. And our state is suffering.