"He's not one of us."
That phrase, uttered in the fourth minute of what Scott Walker believed to be a private phone conversation, tells you everything you need to know about the rookie governor of Wisconsin.
Walker thought he was talking to a patron, conservative billionaire David Koch, but thanks to the amateurish management that seems to be a hallmark of his governorship, he was instead being punked by an impostor from a liberal Web site.
In the recorded call, Walker praised a centrist state senator, Tim Cullen, as "about the only reasonable one" among the 14 Democratic legislators who fled the state to deny Walker the quorum he needs to destroy Wisconsin's public-sector unions. But when the fake Koch offered to call Cullen, Walker discouraged him:
"He's pretty reasonable, but he's not one of us. . . . He's not there for political reasons. He's just trying to get something done. . . . He's not a conservative. He's just a pragmatist."
(snip)
Cullen had a description of Walker, too. "This is the eighth governor that I've worked with in one way or another - four Republicans, four Democrats - and this is the first governor who takes a clear public position that he will never negotiate," said Cullen, who worked in Republican governor Tommy Thompson's administration between stints in the state Senate. "The other seven were willing to take the 70 or 80 percent of what they wanted. . . . That's what you need to do to make government work."
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Cullen got a call from Thompson this week and is hoping his old friend will persuade Walker to negotiate. But that won't be easy.
Under Walker's tribal political theory, governing is a never-ending cycle of revenge killings. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/25/AR2011022503021.html?hpid=opinionsbox1