March 17, 2015--Scott Walker: Take One

By some accounts, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is the GOP front runner for the 2016 presidential nomination. Jeb Bush, with his last name and all the money has been able to extract, is close behind.

To some this is shocking--how could a politician whose claim to fame is that he took on the state's municipal unions, but is unsure where Iraq is on the map, how could he be the front runner when someone as senior and well-bred, as well-tutored and well-financed as Jeb be barely hanging on to second place?

Perhaps precisely because Walker is not senior, not well-bred, not well-tutored, and not yet well-financed. He's the "not" candidate.

The Republican base, which Walker primarily appeals to, is fed up with the well-educated and well-sired, and like the appearance that he is running on the cheap without the help of the Adelsons and Kochs. They also love the fact that Walker took on the unions. So much so that they jumped with glee the other day in a speech to CPAC when he claimed that confronting the unions prepared him to battle ISIS.

Members of the permanent government and the remnants of the mainstream press were aghast while in Peoria and all over Iowa the base ate it up. To them it was red meat. And though red meat will kill you, they still can't get enough of it.

Members of the Establishment don't get the emotional power of this anti-union thing. Especially the particular animus Walker and his coven have toward municipal workers--benign folks such as teachers, the police, firefighters, sanitation workers, county clerks, EMS responders.

Most of them aren't making out-of-line salaries and they are often provide vitally needed services. So what's the story?

With the economy uncertain, with people who have basic private sector jobs worried about their declining pension savings and whether or not their jobs will be off-shored to India, with their cost of health care continuing to rise (though at a slower rate thanks to Obamacare), with their kids more and more in debt with student loans, they look at how tenured teachers are doing, how firefighters are faring, how cops in their neighborhoods are retiring after 20-25 years of service at 80 percent of their last year's salary (bulked up by overtime), retiring at 50-55 with guaranteed pensions and lifetime healthcare coverage, and it makes them resentful, envious, and mad as hell.

Walker, who never even entered college, embodies all those frustrations and provides the delicious spectacle of beating up on these workers and their unions.

So he's number one in the current polls, but of course last time around even Donald Trump was in the lead. For about a week. As was Michele Bachmann. Also for a week. And we know what happened to them. The smart money (or the big money) may be on Jeb Bush but the action and passion on the ground is with Scott Walker.

As my grandmother used to say, "We'll see."