We’re still a year away from the first official votes being cast in the 2016 Republican presidential primary in my home state of Iowa. Yet some of my brethren seem willing to declare the contest over and award Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker the victory before he’s truly been vetted.
How about we make a guy go through the job interview before we hire him based solely off his resume?
Now, to be sure Walker has an attractive resume, which is why I have several kind things to say about him in my book Rules for Patriots: How Conservatives Can Win Again. This is also where I lay out the four pillars of the American Left: the child-killing movement, the homosexual lobby, the educrats, and the government sector union mobocracy. In my lifetime, Walker is the only Republican elected official who has dismantled one of those pillars (government sector union mobocracy).
By doing so, Walker has actually inflicted casualties on the other side – a rarity in an age of girly-men corporatist Republicans – and has overcome more adversity than any other potential candidate because of it. Thus, Walker has earned the opportunity to be considered a first tier candidate for the 2016 GOP nomination.
However, while Walker’s resume gives him ample opportunity to make the sale to conservatives, it’s how he articulates on a broader slate of issues he’d face as president that will determine if he can close the sale. And it is here where conservatives need to slow our roll on Walker, and allow the vetting process to play itself out.
This week, our editor SteveDeace.com, who is a Wisconsin native, decided to seriously examine his favorite governor as a national candidate for the first time. He found several items that merit further vetting and questioning as part of the job interview process.
Pro-Life: Walker hired a pro-child killing spokesperson for his re-election bid, which ultimately led him to craft a campaign commercial that “Live Action” declared the wimpiest pro-life ad of 2014. Walker actually put the following into writing in his re-election campaign: “I support legislation to increase safety and to provide more information for a woman considering her options. The bill leaves the final decision to a woman and her doctor. Now, reasonable people can disagree on this issue. Our priority is to protect the health and safety of all Wisconsin citizens.” Note there was nothing about the health and safety of the baby in there.
Common Core: Walker has shown significant blind spots concerning Common Core, often straddling the fence rather than fully understanding the grassroots’ passionate opposition to this plan.
Amnesty: He has given numerous, conflicting statements regarding immigration. But in almost all of them amnesty appears to be well within Walker’s list of governing preferences. In fact, Mark Levin said some aspects of Walker’s statements on the issue were “more radical than Obama.”
Obamacare: Walker opposed the effort led by Texas Senator Ted Cruz to defund Obamacare in 2013.
Marriage: He was Romney-esque last June when he stiff-armed questions about his views on marriage by saying, “I don’t comment on everything out there,” he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Then he dug his hole even deeper by saying that instead of clarifying his position on marriage he was “just not stating one at all.” All the while his state’s marriage amendment was under attack in the courts.
Right-to-Work: Perhaps most amazingly when you consider his record busting the public sector unions, Walker has inexplicably been soft on promoting right-to-work legislation for his state.
Walker has struggled to transfer his passion for union-busting to other national issues conservatives care the most about. While we can disagree on whether any or all of these concerns are disqualifiers, they’re certainly concerns that Candidate Walker should be asked to address in a primary nonetheless. That’s what primaries are for.
At the very least we now know a man whose reputation is an uncompromising defense of principle seems far more comfortable with triangulation and sophistry than we initially thought. What we next need to discern is whether this was all clever maneuvering on his part while he was under a constant Democrat microscope, or when push comes to shove perhaps his heart may not be with conservatives on important issues.