In the last two weeks, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has won a level of support most Republican presidential candidates only dream of. After delivering a fiery speech in Iowa to conservative voters itching for a 2016 White House win, Walker commands almost entirely unified backing from the conservative media.
Influential right-leaning opinion leaders in radio, TV and online media are rallying behind Walker as a serious contender for the White House. Other potential 2016 Republican candidates like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio have, at best, received skeptical or lukewarm praise from the same crowd.
Perhaps most significant for working class Republican primary voters is the heaps of praise showered on Walker by talk radio giant Rush Limbaugh. “He built the machine that defeats the left,” Limbaugh said of Walker on his show Monday. “He has shown how to do it, and he did it. He is a walking gold mine.”
Walker’s speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit “changed things,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News last week. “The [candidates] who are serious are the ones who impress audiences, and I think Rush is a very good reflection of the Republican constituency, he’s a perceptive guy and I think Scott Walker is getting up there to the top tier.”
In Iowa, the 47-year-old Walker touted his record as governor of Wisconsin and painted himself as an everyman who shops on a budget. He told the audience he would “come back many times in the future.”
The Iowa caucuses in February 2016 will be the first major electoral event for the Republican presidential primary. Candidates who perform poorly in the caucuses are generally believed to be long shots for the GOP nomination. At least among base conservatives, Walker’s performance at the Freedom Summit, a 2016 coming-out event organized by Hawkeye State Republican Rep. Steve King, leapfrogged Walker past more familiar hopefuls.
A few days after the summit, former GOP nominee Mitt Romney announced he won’t run, but former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has conveyed a strong sense that he will. Neither Bush nor Romney attended the event.
“I think in general what you’re seeing here is an impulse [within the GOP] to move forward,” Ed Morrissey, editor of the conservative site HotAir.com, told the Washington Examiner media desk after the Freedom Summit. “Scott Walker’s reception is an indication of that. He delivered a really good speech, maybe the best I’ve heard from Walker. I think the reception shows, when it comes to 2016, they’re looking for the future and not for the past.”
Republican pollster Dick Morris said as much in a Tuesday column at The Hill. “Energetic, young, charismatic and fresh, Walker provides just the kind of generational contrast [presumptive Democratic candidate Hillary] Clinton has most to fear.” He wrote. “And, now with Mitt Romney out of the race, he can spread his wings.”
A non-scientific poll posted on the influential Drudge Report earlier this week showed Walker as a clear favorite for the GOP nomination, at least among Drudge’s most enthusiastic readers (and anyone willing to click Walker’s name on the poll multiple times, as there was no limit on the number of times one person could participate). As of Wednesday, Walker was at 44 percent. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was at a distant second with 13 percent.
But a more accurate poll, the Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics Iowa poll, also showed strong signs for a Walker candidacy. The poll showed that 15 percent of likely Republican Iowa caucus-goers want Walker as president, making him the number one choice among Republican candidates. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul got the second most votes with 14 percent. Bush, the presumptive favorite of the GOP establishment, garnered just 8 percent for a fifth-place finish between retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
“Let the Scott Walker boomlet continue,” said National Review editor Rich Lowry in a blog post that linked to the poll results.
Michael Barone, senior political analyst for the Examiner, wrote favorably of Walker in his latest column. Walker’s “Des Moines speech and his jump in the Iowa poll certainly do not make him the favorite for the nomination,” Barone wrote. “But they likely guarantee him serious attention in what is currently a crowd of candidates.”
