Tuesday, February 2, 2010

It's The Nature Of The Beast

Scott Walker, perpetual gubernatorial candidate, like a good candidate, filed his campaign finance report this weekend. Walker says that he did so well, that his report crashed the Government Accountability Board's system:
There were so many donations flowing Walker’s campaign for governor, that Government Accountability Boards’ (GAB) online system could not process them, Walker campaign staff said today.

“We ended up having to ‘unload’ our report because we brought the system to a grinding halt with the sheer volume of our donations, and other people had trouble filing their reports. The system just couldn’t process how large our donor listing was,” said Walker campaign manager Keith Gilkes.
The GAB, however, said that Team Walker is full of it:
“The Campaign Finance Information System did not crash. It was up and running throughout the weekend. No filers were prevented from downloading information, and the system has remained available throughout the filing period.”

“There was a small issue with the system generating the Walker campaign’s report in PDF format. That issue has been resolved, and the PDF has been posted to the web site. Users interested in viewing Walker’s reports are urged to do so using the system’s ‘View Receipts’ and ‘View Expenses’ functions, which allow the data to be downloaded in Microsoft Word or Excel formats.”
On the right side of the Cheddarsphere, Kevin Binversie thinks that there was probably a problem, but that Team Walker is merely embellishing the situation, afterall, it's just politics.

On the left side, Cory Liebmann thinks that this is just another reality check for Walker.

I think it is just part of an ongoing pattern for Walker. He likes to take credit for things that he really can't or shouldn't, and he likes to do it in the most grandstanding fashion he can think of.

There is a long list of times when he has done this.

Walker claimed to be the one responsible for Family Care, a new way of administering services for the disabled and the elderly. In reality, Milwaukee County is converting into Family Care because it was ordered to do so by Governor Doyle, and the whole process is under the approval of the state.

Walker also tried to claim credit for a $7 million surplus from the 2007 budget. The truth is that was the year Walker had a showboating event at the businesses of one of his campaign contributors, in which he vetoed the entire budget for that year (another election year, by the way). He vetoed it because he thought it was hopeless and he wanted to distance himself from it after the Board overrode his veto:

But Walker has spent the past week trying to distance himself from various board budget actions, and he continued that tack after the vote.

"It's their budget now," he said in a statement issued by his office. He added: "Despite my disagreement with the board, the professionals in my administration will work to implement the County Board budget for 2007."

This list of examples of Walker doing things like this is almost endless. I don't know if this is merely a character flaw for Walker or some kind of, narcissistic personality disorder or if he is overcompensating for a deep-seated insecurity issue.

But whatever the cause, this is just the nature of the beast. And in this case, the beast happens to be a weasel.

No comments:

Post a Comment