Those include the Koch Brother-fueled anonymous third-party donor groups, several right-wing foundations in Wisconsin and other conservative interests who think Walker would make a great candidate. To them, apparently, he seems like a good alternative, a well-disguised extremist. The "Walker for prez" whispering campaign also involves Walker's totally jump-sharking, error-filled book about his "brave" and "bold" campaign against represented public workers, entitled "Unintimidated." Unfortunately for the Walkerites, their guy is very flawed politically. What may sell to a plurality of frustrated, blue collar, tea party types in rural Wisconsin is just not going to work on the national scale.
Most important, Walker's been a principal target in two John Doe probes (that's a grand jury proceeding in Wisconsin). The first one led to felony charges against a half dozen of his campaign and/or public office staffers plus a key donor. The second is still pending. Conservative groups reportedly are spending big bucks to try to stall the second proceeding. They wouldn't be doing that without good cause for alarm. Indeed, the probe seems to be focusing on evidence of illegal collusion between "independent" expenditures and the Walker campaign organization, so donors to the high-powered legal attack on prosecutors may very well be protecting themselves, too.
The big selling point for Walker and his supporters is that he rescued a fiscally "broke" state by conservative fiscal policies but those policies really aren't conservative and rarely use wise much less conservative accounting principles. In his state budgets he has spent more than any other Wisconsin governor in history (sound familiar?). Also, under him the state has greatly increased its long-term borrowing even as Walker has played austerity games with social programs and public employees, whom have seen their benefits and total compensation slashed and their unions largely neutered.
The one thing Walker has had going for him are huge, record-setting (i.e., eight-figure) campaign donations, mostly from out of state, and a rhetorical delivery style that on the surface is calm and articulate (not really articulate, though, either from the context of syntax or facts). I'm among those who think all this simply won't be enough to sustain him on a national scale. He's as much damaged goods as Christie is, right now, only the national press corps hasn't really tipped to that, yet. For a read-out on how Wisconsin is really doing under Walker:
http://prairiebadger.wordpress.com/2014/01/22/the-real-state-of-the-state-of-wisconsin/
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