GOP crusader Walker reaches to center in volatile Wisconsin

[riversedge]

If walker gets re-elected again, I honestly swear I just might give up on Wisconsin. damn.




By THOMAS BEAUMONT and SCOTT BAUER
Yesterday

https://apnews.com/4ba035de669d4b88b960671ce465a032


GOP crusader Walker reaches to center in volatile Wisconsin

JANESVILLE, Wis. (AP) — Not long ago, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was the voice of a conservative revolution in the heartland, a Republican at the vanguard and a possible future president. Today, he’s the voice of concern, warning his party — at home and nationally — that change is coming again.

In private meetings, public forums and his own policy moves, Walker has made clear he sees worrisome signs for the GOP and the hard-line conservatism that’s marked his eight years in office. Wisconsin, which helped hand the White House to Republicans, is looking for something different, Walker has said, and Democrats are motivated.

A recent local election should be a “wake-up call” to the changes afoot in the rural and exurban pockets that 17 months ago voted enthusiastically for President Donald Trump, he recently told a group of GOP donors and activists.

Walker is acting on his own advice. As he seeks a third term in office, he’s embraced a bipartisan tone and a strikingly moderate set of policy proposals. The man who eight years ago set out to dismantle public employee unions is now backing efforts that mirror aspects of former President Barack Obama’s health care law and describing his policy differences with Democrats as modest.

......................................................

Walker’s concerns about the mood of white working-class voters resonate beyond Wisconsin and could easily translate to Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania — Rust Belt states that Trump won and that could go a long way toward determining who controls Congress next year.

As a battle-tested Republican from such a state, and who shares the ballot this fall with Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Walker is worth heeding, said Matt Brooks, executive director of the national Republican Jewish Coalition.

“There are a lot of winds aloft that could have impacts on the broader electoral outlook,” Brooks said.

Walker knows something about misjudging the resilience of a political moment.

Riding the tea-party wave and anti-union fervor, Walker got national attention for his push to strip public employee unions of bargaining power, in a state that first encoded such rights 50 years earlier.

Tens of thousands of teachers, prison guards and other public employees demonstrated in the Capitol, and Walker beat back a recall effort, receiving 200,000 more votes than he did in his election win less than two years earlier. Walker tried to use the platform to launch a presidential bid, but his campaign quickly fizzled. By early November 2016, he was at Trump’s side at a campaign stop in northwest Wisconsin.

Walker sounded different at the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting in Las Vegas last month. Behind closed doors, he pointed to a special election upset in Wisconsin this year in the typically Republican, small-town lake lands of northwest Wisconsin, members attending later described. Trump had carried the state Senate district by 17 percentage points.

Walker attributed the stunning reversal in a district of middle- and lower-income white voters in the St. Croix River valley northeast of Minneapolis to Democratic anger with Trump, and wider frustration with the largely stalled agenda in the GOP-controlled Congress.............................

[old guy]

1. Good luck selling that swill Wanker.

[Wwcd]

2. There's not a big enough bandaid speach to cover the Hard Right brotherhood of Walker's past.

If WI buys his desperate sudden lean then they deserve what they get.

Hoping Trump stops by WI on his way to CA & PA.

[Heartstrings]

3. If I'm not mistaken

that district (St. Croix) just flipped blue in 2018. Could be wrong and please correct me, but it seems to me Scooter is running scared.....

[beachbum bob]

4. the anti-evironment stance of today's republicans and the sacking of public lands for

profit turns many voters away from Walker who is doing the same in wisconsin for the likes of Foxcom facility and billions walker gave away to them.

Wisconsin is very proud of their natural resourses, state parks and clean water and all have been impacted since Walker been in office. The tide eventually turns

and this one is going to be a tidal wave we have not seen before

[strangedaysindeed]

5. Everybody in this state knows

that his scoot to the middle is bullshit, and if he's reelected things will go right back the way they've been for the last six years.

[OnDoutside]

6. And his record should be hammered back at him all the way to November.

[strangedaysindeed]

7. RE: His record

You guys might be interested in a blogspot called

the Political Environment

https://thepoliticalenvironment.blogspot.com

[rlegro]

8. He's not "reaching" to the center....

...he's merely posturing to it. He took a couple billion dollars out of secondary and higher education in Wisconsin within the first couple years of his first term. Now he has proposed to restore a third of that, calling the amount the biggest public education increase in state funding, ever. But he avoids the negative context while pandering to public school parents.

Even more disturbing is that he shirks his executive duties and refuses to schedule special elections to fill two state legislative seats, meaning voters in those districts will be without representation for about a year until the next general election. This is highly inconsistent. As the article notes, Walker did schedule a special election to fill a state senate seat in a GOP-safe district. Only the Democratic Party upstart easily won. So Walker is worried he'll lose more leverage in the GOP-dominated legislature. Double standard? Hypocrisy? That's Walker, "reaching" out to moderate and liberal voters.

[LakeArenal]

9. Has he created those 250,000 jobs yet?

Oh, but our roads are so much better! Oh wait, no they aren't.

But our schools, indeed our schools are so much.... mmm... no.

But he at least got rid of that damn OBAMA Care, right?.. Oh yeah, he's in on that now...

Saving us from Hillary taking our guns cuz Trump says....Oh, HE wants to take the guns? Ironic.

[riversedge]

10. that was the call for years, but honestly, I do not know.

[Still In Wisconsin]

11. Bullshit. He's tossing a couple of bread crumbs to make sure folks in rural Wisconsin keep voting

against their own best interest. A few bucks for rural school districts here, a few dollars for rural broadband there, and he's got his opponent backed into Dane and Milwaukee Counties again, where voter ID and other voter suppression tactics should take care of the rest. Scott K. Walker is a sleazy, slimy bastard but he knows what side his bread is buttered on.