Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker backtracked from his previous assertion that his state’s teachers and their supporters are “terrorists” by labeling them “special interests” at this year’s speech to conservatives that two years ago helped take him out of the top rung of potential GOP presidential contenders.
At 2015’s Conservative Political Action Conference, he said: “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world,” in response to an audience member who asked him how he would confront the self-proclaimed Islamic State terrorist group.
Two years later, to the same audience, he now says: “You remember, 14 Senate Democrats fled the state to give the special interests time to organize and send protesters in from across the country. At one point, over 100,000 occupied our Capitol. That’s right, the occupy movement didn’t start on Wall Street, it started on my street in Madison, Wisconsin,” he was slated to say in scheduled remarks.
He was discussing his still-controversial decision to bar state workers from collective bargaining, but this year instead of flat-out calling those workers terrorists, he simply labeled them “special interests.”
In 2011, Madison was the scene of massive protests in response to Walker’s proposal to limit state unions’ collective-bargaining rights.
He has changed his 2015 rhetoric to show how he became a victim of those protests, instead of essentially calling protesters terrorists.
“Along the way, the protesters didn’t limit themselves to one place,” Walker told the convening just outside Washington. “They were out in front of our executive residence. And they even found their way to my family home more than an hour from the state Capitol.
“I received death threats, my wife received threats, my sons (who were still in high school at the time) were targeted on Facebook. The protesters interrupted the dedication of a new welcome center, the 100-year celebration of a state park and the anniversary of a historic technical college,” he lamented.
Walker then went on to decry anti-GOP gatherings across the country as “angry mobs.”
“These days, I hear stories from around the country about protesters showing up en masse to disrupt public meetings,” said Walker, who is expected to seek a third term in the governor’s mansion. “Angry mobs trying to stop others from speaking. Defenders of the status quo trying to stop people from doing what they said they’d do during the election. My reaction is simple: been there, seen that.”
