Friday, June 10, 2016

The Return of Walker 2016



Well, that escalated quickly.

On Monday, Scott Walker had this to say about presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump:
A week after fellow Wisconsinite Paul Ryan endorsed Donald Trump's bid for president, Gov. Scott Walker said Monday he will have no problems supporting the presumptive Republican nominee even though "he wasn't my first choice."

Walker, in the Fox Cities Monday for a listening session, said in an interview with USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin that he believes Trump is a better fit for the presidency than the expected Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton.

Walker, a onetime presidential candidate, said he has made it clear since the Aug. 6 Republican presidential debate in Cleveland that he would support his party's nominee, no matter who it is. That includes Trump.

"I said it then, and I'll repeat it now, that I felt like any of the people on that stage were better than Hillary Clinton," Walker said. "He wasn't my first choice. He wasn't my choice in Wisconsin. There are issues, not the least of which lately with his statements about the judge he commented on, which I just fundamentally disagree with him on, so just saying that I'll support him over Hillary Clinton doesn't mean I embrace all the things that he says or all the ways that he says it."

Walker said his support for Trump isn't a matter of party loyalty, but rather that he doesn't trust Clinton.
Not a warm embrace, but definitely supportive.

But by Wednesday, Walker had amped up his criticism of Hair Furor and the racist statements he had made towards U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel:
Gov. Scott Walker blasted presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s remarks about U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel on Wednesday.

“I’m focused on calling out the fact that I believe what he said about the judge is wrong, not as a Republican or Democratic or as a political person but just as an American,” the Republican governor told reporters at the Alliant Energy Center. “In this country, we don’t judge people based upon their race, their sex, their ethnicity, their religious beliefs. That’s just a fundamental principle going back to the founding of our country. “
Obviously, racist statements made by Trump is a bad thing, although he didn't mind it so much within his own campaign and staff.

On the same day, Walker served up some waffles strongly fortified with irony (emphasis mine):
In an interview with Madison, Wisconsin’s WKOW, Walker, who dropped out of the GOP race in September 2015, lamented the general-election matchup between presumptive nominees Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

“It’s just sad in America that we have such poor choices right now,” he said.

Walker, who endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the Wisconsin primary, had previously pledged to support the Republican nominee “whoever that is,” arguing that any GOP candidate would be preferable to Clinton. On Tuesday, however, the Wisconsin governor seemed less certain of his ability to back Trump, pointing to the candidate’s accusations of bias against a Hispanic federal judge as especially troubling.

He’s not yet the nominee. Officially that won’t happen until the middle of July, and so for me that’s kind of the timeframe,” Walker said. “In particular I want to make sure that he renounces what he says, at least in regards to this judge.”
Whoa! It takes some nerve for a guy that was so quickly and soundly rejected by both the voters and his own backers in his own presidential bid to be calling anyone "a poor choice." And that's not getting into his own underwater approval ratings.

The right wing site Red State started speculating that Walker is considering being the nominee of Trump is finally rejected at the Republican convention:
"He's not the nominee yet" really can only mean one possible thing: Walker is among the people who are at least entertaining the possibility that something might happen to prevent Trump from becoming the nominee in July.
When Jessie Opoien of the Cap Times asked Walker about these rumors, he downplayed them:
Gov. Scott Walker shook his head at rumors floated Wednesday that he is open to accepting the Republican nomination if Donald Trump's candidacy falls apart before the party's convention in July.

"I am completely committed to being governor," Walker told reporters. "If I run another campaign in the future, it’ll be running for re-election for governor in 2018, and I won’t make a decision on that until after the elections and after the budget. But that would be the only campaign I’d consider in the future."

Asked what he would do if the possibility were raised on the convention floor, Walker laughed.

"I think, we could talk about hypotheticals all day long. I don’t think any of those are likely," he said.
It would be easy to believe that Walker is just trying to hype this controversy and is making these speculative statements in order to help him restart his stalled fundraising efforts to pay off the $900,000 he still owes from his spectacularly failed presidential bid.

But the gentle reader should remember that Walker alluded to something like this two months ago. The gentle reader should also remember that the two chairs of the convention, Paul Ryan and Reince Priebus, are BFFs with Walker.

And with the way this election season has gone, can we really rule anything out?

3 comments:

  1. I'm just proud. So proud. We've got the biggest douche-bag in America...right here in Wisconsin. We're #1! We're #1! We're #1!

    ReplyDelete