The Great Whitebread Hope does it again
by digby
I wrote a bit on Salon about the Great Whitebread Hope’s latest gaffe. That’s right, Scott Walker did it again. This time he tried to change the mission statement of the University of Wisconsin to make it into some kind of vocational school and in the process attacked one of the most cherished state values, the Wisconsin Idea, beloved for over a hundred years. He does this stuff over and over again and yet the beltway persists in seeing him as a brilliant politician, even more brilliant than his Upper Midwest presidential hopeful forebears:
Walker seems to be thrilling the punditocracy even more than these bland Governors usually do. This undoubtedly has to do with the fact that he survived a recall effort and won re-election afterwards, which makes him in the eyes of the beltway some sort of giant slayer. But the fact is that he first won in the Democratic bloodbath of 2010 and then barely eked out a win in the next Democratic bloodbath of 2014. In the middle of those two off-year Republican landslides, he was recalled! No other Governor in the nation was recalled, but Scott Walker was and that somehow makes him a great moderate reformer who is a GOP national hero. By that logic, more Governors should want to be recalled so they can be admired for their political brilliance.