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I Killed Latin. What Did You Do?

Scott Walker has a killer card to play in the GOP primaries.
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I’ve been thinking more about Scott Walker and his potential staying power. And the more I think about it, the more I think he’s got a real shot at the whole thing. I would certainly not call him the front-runner. He’s got a lot to learn, and a lot to prove before it’s worth talking about him in those terms. But he’s got a really valuable card to play that I can’t quite figure out how his major opponents are going to answer effectively. And that card could make him quite dangerous.

Unlike Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Rand Paul or the various also-rans, Scott Walker picked a high-profile battle over a core issue that both the establishment and more insurgent types care about – the status and position of public sector unions. His opponents rose to the challenge, and threw everything they had into the battle to defeat him – to the point of trying to get him recalled before the next scheduled election. The showdown went down in a purple-to-blue state. And Walker won, unequivocally.

Jindal and Perry can point to very conservative things they did as governors – but Louisiana and Texas are very conservative states. Could they do the same in Washington? Ted Cruz can tout his purism – but he’s accomplished literally less than nothing, with his antics having demonstrably backfired in multiple instances. Chris Christie and Jeb Bush can tout their own records – but their opponents can turn around and point to things in those same records that offend the faithful, including not merely compromises but issues that they ran on and advocated forcefully. Rand Paul . . . well, Rand Paul is Rand Paul.

Scott Walker can say to anyone touting their conservative bonafides: “you talk the talk, but I walked the walk.” But he can also credibly say, “you’ve got to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em,” without sounding like a moderate squish – because in one very high profile situation, he held ’em, and he won.

And sometimes, you win the game when you fold a hand. In his most recent confrontation – an attempt to change the mission of the Wisconsin public university system – Walker folded – partially. The changes to the mission statement (which would have reduced the mission of the university system to “meet[ing] the state’s workforce needs”) have been scrapped. So Latin isn’t dead yet. But the $300 million in funding cuts remain, so Latin’s probably going to have a tough time surviving, ultimately. Backing down on a symbolic issue may in fact take the pressure off the more substantive changes. If so, Walker may have another victory to tout.

I don’t know whether he’s skillful enough to do so, but if he is, he can play this card over and over again against every one of his primary opponents. And I can’t think of a really solid answer any of them can make. (Well, other than his policies are bad ones, but I somehow think that answer won’t go over well in a GOP primary.)

That doesn’t mean Walker wins – you need more than one good card to win. But this card really is a killer.

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