Did you catch Scott Walker's press conference where he announced he was "suspending" his campaign? To tell you the truth, I didn't, at least not live. But I did did manage to catch the part where he said, "I encourage other candidates to do the same (quit) so that the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive, conservative alternative to the current front-runner. This is fundamentally important to the future of the Party, and more importantly, to the future of the country."
How magnanimous of Scottso to put his party and country first. Such a trooper. And how about the parting shot he took at his party's "current frontrunner." Nice touch, Gov, not mentioning his name. But then it takes a special kind of courage to compare union protesters to ISIS, right?
Regardless of whatever spin the Walker campaign may attempt to put on this "suspension," the truth is that Scott Walker simply sucked as a candidate. His decision to drop out of the race had nothing to do with helping his party defeat Donald Trump; it had everything to do with his lousy poll numbers, which were so low they had to be put under an electron microscope just to be detected.
It's also time to put an end to this ridiculous myth that Scott Walker was some kind of political dynamo in Wisconsin just because he got elected three times - one of them by virtue of a recall. To be clear, Walker received a boatload of soft money and had the good fortune of running against some of the weakest candidates the Democrats have ever fielded in the Badger state. Over the last few months, his popularity there has plummeted.
To those not familiar with Wisconsin, the state is considered by many political pundits to be a toss up, but that's not entirely true. If you take away Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, the state has voted Democrat in every single presidential election going back five decades. In fact, prior to the 2010 wave election that saw the GOP take the House and many gubernatorial races, Wisconsin's legislature was under Democratic control. Far from being a dynamo, Walker seems to have been the beneficiary of some incredible good timing and inept politics.
In the end, his luck and money simply ran out, His donors were bailing on him left and right and he didn't exactly help himself trying to one-up Trump by suggesting we put a wall on the Canadian border. Apparently it never dawned on him that at least one third of the border between the U.S. and Canada is surrounded by water. They're not called the Great Lakes for nothing, Scotty.
But it wasn't just his draconian positions that did him in. He simply had no personality to speak of. In the two debates he was about as flat as you could be. If Jeb Bush was low energy, Walker was practically comatose. And when he did manage to open his mouth, he looked like a really bad stand-up comic who was desperately trying to remember the punchlines to his jokes. Even his most ardent supporters knew they had a dead horse on their hands.
Scott Walker is no leader. In fact, he's a pretty shitty governor with a lousy record in a state that, thanks to his policies, is now facing a budget shortfall of $2.2 billion. Just imagine what he might've done to the country if he had gotten half the chance. A friend of mine on Facebook summed up the news of Scott Walker's departure from the presidential election best. "Scott, who?"
Bye, bye, Governor. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
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