Scott Walker’s message is simple: he’s a political outsider who beat down the unions and was elected three times in a blue state. The problem is that the narrative gets a bit more complicated the closer you look.
Let’s start with the “political outsider” part. Walker was born to a preacher and a bookkeeper in Colorado before the family settled down in a small town in Wisconsin. He got involved with The Boy Scouts and became interested in politics, which led him to a seminar in Washington D.C., where he met Ronald Reagan. Newly inspired, he managed to become a controversial figure in the student government of Marquette University by the end of his first year. He spent his sophomore year in a surprisingly divisive campaign for student body president before he ultimately lost and withdrew from the university. He, and Marquette, claim he left in good standing. Opponents are still trying to find something in the departure to attack him with.
By the time he was 25 Walker had run two campaigns for a state assembly seat, one unsuccessful and the other victorious. In the statehouse he was widely noted as one of the most conservative Republicans, being farther to the right than 86 percent of state representatives. After a few years there he ran for county executive, promising to donate some of his salary back and be a strict fiscal conservative. He won and ended up shrinking the workforce of the county government by about 20 percent. In 2006, he made a failed bid to be the Republican nominee for governor, but ended up just taking another term as county executive instead. Then in 2010, outside spending forces and the Tea Party propelled him to the Governor’s Mansion.
As you can see, his status as a “political outsider” is very questionable. He’s been obsessed with politics for at least three decades and had run for office twice by the time he was 25. He’s spent almost all of the last 25 years in office or running for one.
However, there is little doubt that Walker is very conservative. Voters, at least, think he’s very close to being the most conservative candidate in the primary. He’s most famous for effectively ending collective bargaining for teachers in Wisconsin. This forms the centerpiece of his speeches, even when it really shouldn’t. For instance he has claimed that he could beat ISIS because he took on the Wisconsin teacher’s union. On another occasion he said that one of Reagan’s greatest foreign policy decisions was ending an air traffic controller’s strike because it showed the world he was serious. Questionable foreign policy views aside, Walker is (presently) at or near the most conservative edge of every issue. He’s against abortion in all cases, opposes a path to citizenship, enacted right to work laws, is presently trying to cut $300 million and tenure from the state university system, wants a constitutional amendment letting states ban same-sex marriage, supports even more dramatic tax cuts and has pushed for voter ID laws for decades.
So, he’s a tough-talking ultraconservative who won three times in a blue state, right? Well, sort of. While Wisconsin usually gives its electoral votes to Democrats, Walker has almost always had Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature while governor. That’s not exactly the type of environment that you would expect in a “blue state.” He has also been greatly helped, perhaps more than any other governor, by timing and outside donations. His election and re-election races came in some of the best years ever for Republicans nationwide. The recall election prompted by the collective bargaining dispute was filled with outside money pouring in from business and conservative groups and came in a year where a Wisconsin congressman was on the Republican presidential ticket, surely boosting conservative turnout. Many voters also viewed him as not having had a fair chance yet and voted for him to at least finish the term, even if they didn’t like him.
Furthermore, an ultraconservative Scott Walker was not running. During his re-election bid he publicly rejected right to work laws, appeared to accept court rulings on same-sex marriage and abortion, supported a pathway to citizenship, and gave no indication he was about to try to destroy the state university system. Then he won, started running for president, and promptly started turning hard to the right. He pulled a similar stunt with collective bargaining. In short, the Scott Walker running for the Republican nomination was not the Scott Walker who won election in Wisconsin. In fact, after his turn to the right he now only has a 43% approval rating in Wisconsin, suggesting that he probably couldn’t even carry it in a presidential election. Forget any other blue states.
With that said, Walker has a myriad of advantages going into the primary. The current incarnation of Scott Walker is unquestionably conservative, meaning the only thing the Tea Party can attack him on is flip-flopping. He can counter claims that he’s too conservative by glossing over some complexities and saying he was electable in Wisconsin, so surely he’s electable nationwide. And, outside of stretching his union-busting powers to memetic levels, he tends not to say dumb things with a mic on. The Koch brothers, who plan on giving about $900 million to Republicans in 2016, have publicly stated they expect him to win. He connects with Iowa voters, is polling well and is in a good place to present himself as a baggage-free, more conservative alternative to Bush and an electable alternative to the Tea Party candidates. He presents himself as an unrelenting fighter for conservative values poised to sweep into Washington and smash the liberal order.
The problem is all of the changes that make Walker perfect for winning a primary won’t necessarily mean general election success. He’s definitely a career politician; he’s flip-flopped a lot and his tactic of not telling voters what he’s going to do could be undermined by voters being more wary of him because of it. While he would fight for conservative values, it’s important to note that those values have earned him scorn in Wisconsin and are unlikely to gain any support from non-Republicans. In effect, he’d be relying upon the Tea Party strategy of hoping that enough Republicans turn out that they wouldn’t need to change their ideology to make it more in line with the electorate’s.
In a party desperately in need of change, Walker gives a message that many want to hear. But it’s not real change, it’s not entirely accurate and it probably can’t win the White House.