The Walker train wreck: Day One
Musings on Day One of Scooter Walker’s second ill-fated run for governor:
*** Announcing first on Twitter and Charlie Sykes’s show was a stroke of genius — if you think the hard core lunatic fringe and Walker fanatics are going to be enough to win the election. But creative use of the Sykes show is the reason David Clarke is now the mayor of Milwaukee, isn’t it?
***How long will the Journal Sentinel let Steve Schultze cover their fair-haired boy if he keeps checking facts, like he did today:
Walker also says Doyle’s action – and inaction – harms Wisconsin businesses. The governor’s push to enact combined reporting for income taxes on businesses played into Harley-Davidson’s latest layoff decision, Walker said…
Harley spokesman Bob Klein said the state’s new combined reporting law cost the firm $22.5 million in the first quarter this year, but said that “had nothing to do with our work-force reductions.”
*** Walker wishes he were running against Tony Earl:
Jim Doyle “is turning back the clock to the same kind of hopelessness Wisconsin had in the early ’80s under (then Gov.) Tony Earl.”
Running against a Democrat who’s been out of office for 22 years doesn’t sound like a great theme to me. No voter under 40 has the foggiest idea who Tony Earl is. But he must have been bad to lose to someone like Tommy Thompson, who they kind of remember as being governor once.
*** Walker, who asked the state to take over the county’s public assistance programs because the state was about to do it anyway, based on Walker’s incomptence and neglect, now wants the state to pay the bill, too, and is threatening to sue. Good luck with that. Hope we have a lot of court hearings during the campaign to get more of the mess in the record.
*** Walker’s soon off on another taxpayer-paid Harley tour to all of the television markets which reach Wisconsin voters, under the guise of promoting Milwaukee tourism:
“We’ve done it before under similar circumstances. We just make it very clear that we’re only going to talk about official business,” Walker said. “We’re really only going to talk about the purpose of the ride, which is to promote tourism here in southeastern Wisconsin.”
“I try to keep a fairly good firewall,” Walker said at the House of Harley-Davidson in Greenfield.
Let’s watch and see how many times Walker’s run for gov is mentioned in those stories — and then ask him to ante up from his campaign fund, since this is clearly a campaign trip, and has been from the first time he did it.
*** Ed Garvey, who’s always poking Doyle for not being liberal enough, can’t believe Walker’s attacking the gov for being a lefty:
He says Doyle is a lefty who has sold out to liberal special interests. Yah, sure, Scott. If you keep this up Doyle might be invited to Fighting Bob Fest!
Garvey does have Walker’s message down pat:
Scott Walker for governor. “He will fill your prisons, raise tuition, stop stem cell research, make abortion a crime, and auction off our parks. Scott Walker. One of us. A return to an earlier time. Scott Walker.”
*** Finally, save this one so we can remind GOP Chair Reince Preibus of it a year and a half from now:
He predicted the GOP would help re-elect Van Hollen, take back the guv’s office and win majorities in both houses of the Legislature next year.
“I do believe this is going to be a fantastic year for the Republican Party, and I expect us to be able to celebrate in 2010,” Priebus said.
*** Bruce Murphy at Milwaukee Magazine says Neumann may run an anti-Milwaukee campaign against Walker:
Neumann could run ads portraying Milwaukee as a hellhole that Walker is responsible for, with high government benefits and taxes, declining parks, a dirty, poorly maintained courthouse, an out-of-control House of Correction and a County Board and executive who are constantly squabbling.
Milwaukee voters, of course, would know this portrayal is a tad unfair.
Actually, not even a tad. Who is responsible if not Scott Walker? Every word in the paragraph above is absolutely fair game.
***The GOP state convention’s this weekend, and right wing radio talker Jason Lewis of Minneapolis, a sometime fill-in for Rush Windbag, is the banquet speaker. Mark Belling must have been too expensive.
Cory Liebmann asks whether Neumann will beat Walker in the weekend straw poll. The real question is whether it matters. Ask Tom Barrett, who won the straw poll for governor at the Dem convention in 2005 and 2006, ,but not the primary. Never think that the folks in their funny hats even represent hard core primary voters.
That’s all, folks!