Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s stump speech has been described as one he can deliver in his sleep. But as Walker’s poll number’s begin to slip, the governor’s message has a different focus to wake up GOP primary voters: attacking Hillary Clinton.
Walker launched his campaign in Waukesha, Wis., with the message of “a fighter who wins.” During one four-minute appearance onstage at the Voters First Forum in New Hampshire last week, he twice mentioned winning “three elections in four years.” He has frequently discussed his battle with public-sector union workers and talked about his service as governor.
But when he appeared at the first nationally televised presidential debate on Fox News on Thursday, he mentioned his three electoral victories just once in the multiple-hour debate. Instead, he focused on Clinton when he could and interrupted to add quips such as, “everywhere in the world that Hillary Clinton touched is more messed up today than before.”
The governor headed south after the debate, and rather than focus on his success in Wisconsin he again chose to target the Democratic front-runner. Walker was the last presidential candidate to speak at the RedState Gathering in Atlanta, Ga., this weekend, and focused much of his remarks on his opposition to Clinton while Donald Trump’s latest antics dominated national political news.
“I want to spend the last couple minutes of this session talking about one particular candidate: Hillary Clinton,” Walker said on Saturday. “Let me repeat that Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton. Because there’s been a lot of talk in the national media about other candidates, we need to remind the American people, as bad as things are with the president today it’d be much worse if there was a President Hillary Clinton. We can’t let that happen.”
On Sunday, Walker traveled through South Carolina and hammered home the same message. During a visit to Gaffney, home of the large Peachoid landmark made famous by Netflix’s “House of Cards,” Walker reportedly called Clinton “a real threat to this country moving forward,” and added, “I’m the best candidate to take her on.”
Walker’s pivot from his resume to Clinton’s has not yet appeared to have any impact on the polls. But Carly Fiorina — perhaps the most pugnacious Clinton critic in the GOP field — has risen mightily. Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, failed to crack the threshold chosen by Fox News to stock its stage with the top 10 candidates ranked according to national polls. She also finished behind three other GOP presidential candidates in the second-tier debate.
But a new Rasmussen poll shows she has moved into third place nationally, while polls in New Hampshire and Iowa show she has cracked the top five in both of those early states. While Fiorina’s success is likely attributable to a number of different factors, one of the defining features of her campaign thus far has been its relentless rebuttal of Clinton’s talking points.
Now Walker — who is tied with Fiorina in the Rasmussen poll — appears to have taken a page out of Fiorina’s playbook. He explained the reasoning behind his decision to target Clinton on Fox News on Tuesday.
“What I’m going to do instead of doing what Donald Trump is, and that’s attacking other Republicans, I’m going to focus, as I did in the debate, on Hillary Clinton,” Walker said on Fox News. “She’s the real opponent. She’s the one that would be a disaster. Much bigger disaster than even Barack Obama, if anybody can think that’s possible. She would be worse off. I mean you think about Obamacare, she was for Obamacare before Obamacare was even a thought out there, nearly 20 years ago. Everywhere in the world that Hillary Clinton has touched when it comes to foreign policy is worse off today than before she took office. I’m the one that wants to take on Hillary Clinton, not take on other Republicans.”
And the Clinton campaign has noticed. It attacked Walker on Monday from South Carolina, and took issue with his answer that racial issues could be handled by leaders focusing on “unity” rather than racial discord. Whether Walker can leverage the scuffle with Clinton into better poll numbers remains to be seen, but Fiorina has certainly found success by locking horns with the only other major female presidential candidate in the 2016 race.
