“I know how to fight and win,” Scott Walker said throughout his presidential run.
Turns out he also knows how to surrender and lose.
Walker made his name by battling the specialest of special interests, the most insider group of insiders: the government employee unions. These unions had for decades funneled money from workers and taxpayers into giant campaign coffers, used these war chests to help elect friendly politicians, who would then give away more taxpayer money to the unions so they could fund more friendly candidates.
It was a racket, and Walker came to Madison in 2011 to break it up for good. He stripped some of the collective bargaining powers the state had granted the government unions. It wasn’t easy: The government unions were the biggest spenders in state politics by a longshot. Their members controlled the levers of government.
The media was totally sympathetic to the government unions, and soon mobs had taken over the state capitol grounds. Union-funded lawmakers fled the state to prevent a quorum. Public school teachers abandoned their students to protest — a fitting image.
Walker stood firm and beat them. He passed his laws to save taxpayers money. Then he fought off a well-funded recall effort that had become a national cause celebre for the Left. He won the recall with a larger margin than in 2010. All along, politically-motivated, unethical prosecutors came after him and persecuted his allies. Finally Walker won reelection in 2014.
He did this all in a state that has voted Democrat for Senate and President in 15 of 16 elections going back to 1988.
So when Walker entered the presidential race, he had a ready-made argument to appeal to voters who were pragmatic and conservative. Sure Ted Cruz and Rand Paul could stand up on the floor and fight the Washington machine, but what had they ever actually won? And sure Jeb Bush and Chris Christie had won tough elections, but had they actually fought for conservative policies?
Walker’s argument started to crumble in March when he flew to the Iowa Ag Summit and pandered to the ethanol lobby. “I’m willing to go forward on continuing the Renewable Fuel Standard,” Walker said. While he left himself wiggle room by saying the RFS, also known as the ethanol mandate, should be phased out, he certainly wasn’t speaking truth to power in Iowa.
Walker didn’t fight the special interests anymore once the special interests were Republican business lobbyists in the crucial caucus state. It was especially painful because while running for governor he opposed an ethanol mandate, calling it a “big government mandate” and “central planning.”
Walker’s “fight-and-win” mantra was shrewd and effective precisely because it tapped into a very raw conservative grievance: that the Republican establishment was unwilling to fight — that cushy jobs, reelection and cozy relationships with lobbyists were all more valuable than taking risks to advance conservative policies.
And conservatives know that when GOP politicians won’t fight K Street or the Democrats or the media, the politicians end up fighting the conservative base. An early Walker hire, longtime party operative Brad Dayspring, was reviled in some circles for attacking and denigrating Tea Partiers.
Walker followed this well-worn path: After his hire of libertarian-leaning advisor Liz Mair invoked the wrath of ethanol lobbyists, Walker did as they demanded and fired her.
Walker had never been stuck between his base and the establishment in Wisconsin. There he had a reliable — and reliably left-wing Democratic — enemy. In the messier world of 50 states and 16 GOP opponents, he found himself getting stuck in intramural jams for which he was unprepared.
On immigration, Walker seemed lost. One day he told the conservative base what they wanted to hear, and the next day he told the donor class what they wanted to hear.
In August, he announced $80 million in state subsidies for Milwaukee’s NBA team. His justification: The NBA and the Bucks demanded it, and he wasn’t in a position to say no.
The man who had been tested in cross-aisle warfare had come unprepared for battle with corporate lobbyists, donors and party mandarins.
That’s why Sens. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have such good will among the conservative base. To even come to Washington, they had to beat K Street and the GOP establishment in their primaries. To varying degrees, they’ve made peace with some of their former enemies, but they see the donor class as often a rival and at best a partner — never as their natural constituency.
Walker never got that lesson until this year. If he learned from the experience, he could come back in a few years, ready for a bigger fight.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
