Scott Walker told me over the phone that he would wind down the federal ethanol mandate — a widely reviled bit of corporate welfare — over two years.

Walker took heat from conservatives (including me) in March when he went to Iowa and seemed to say that he wouldn’t put the ethanol mandate (officially the Renewable Fuel Standard) on the chopping block any time soon. His Iowa comments, and his campaign’s comments afterwards amounted to: Walker opposes mandates, but out of fairness to the industry built up around the RFS, he won’t kill the existing ethanol mandate until ethanol has “market access” on a level footing with real gasoline. (That’s my paraphrase, but I think it’s an accurate and fair paraphrase.)