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Walker Is Well-Positioned for 2016 Despite His Blunders

Walker is still one of the more plausible nominees in the ever-growing field of candidates.
Scott Walker

Ahead of Scott Walker’s official announcement, Michael Brendan Dougherty reminds us of the governor’s shaky start in the first half of the year:

But for those watching the race closely, and those who have a role in shaping perceptions of Walker, it’s been a bad first half of 2015 for the governor of Wisconsin. He has to start changing that right now, before he’s shoved to the back of the GOP’s clown car.

Another way to look at Walker’s foibles is that he is in surprisingly good shape despite having had a genuinely poor start. He remains in a strong position in Iowa, where he is presumed to have an edge over the rest of the field, and he hasn’t lost much ground to the many declared candidates thus far. If Walker seems “diminished” when compared to how he was perceived last year, he is still one of the more plausible nominees in the ever-growing field of candidates. His lack of foreign policy experience and knowledge may come back to haunt him, but then again his competition is mostly making equally hawkish arguments that are no more or less reasonable than Walker’s. Bush has enormous resources, but he also carries a lot of baggage that Walker doesn’t have. If Walker has vulnerabilities on immigration and Common Core, Bush and Rubio are uniquely ill-suited to exploit them, and he can rely on a reservoir of goodwill from conservative activists and pundits that most of the other candidates simply don’t have.

I think having Walker as the nominee would be a serious mistake for the GOP, but my guess is that it is the one that they are most likely to make. In the end, Republican voters are going to want to nominate someone that they think can win the election, and enough of them will interpret Walker’s electoral record as proof that he can do that. They may be wrong about this, but that is why they are likely to opt for him when it comes time to vote.

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