Can the media make Scott Walker the Next Big Thing in Republican presidential politics? With Mitt Romney announcing today that he's breaking my heart by not running, the race is in need of a new storyline. And in the wake of a good performance at the Iowa Freedom Summit-which I submit is the excuse for, but not the cause of, the sudden interest in Walker-he's everywhere in the political media.
"The Beltway is abuzz over Scott Walker," says The Hill. "We're in the middle of a Scott Walker boomlet," says Peter Beinart in the Atlantic. Here are articles about him in Slate, and Bloomberg News, and The Week. What there isn't, though, is any particular evidence that rank-and-file Republicans across America are flocking to his banner. Polls at this stage don't tell us anything about what will happen in the future, but they can tell us what people think right now, and right now Walker is at about 5 percent in primary polls. That isn't surprising, but it shows that the Walker groundswell has yet to emerge.
It's early yet, of course, and at this stage the opinions of party activists are much more important than those of average voters. Nevertheless, the Walker surge for now exists only in the thoughts of those who report and write about politics.
Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that. There are good reasons why he might turn out to be able to be a serious presidential contender, despite his oft-noted lack of charisma. As all these observers note, Walker is offering not just an uncompromising conservatism, but one that is backed up by electoral results. He won three elections in four years (elected, survived recall, re-elected) in a state that Barack Obama won twice. Unlike someone like Ted Cruz-who has lost pretty much every battle he's fought since arriving in Washington-Walker can say not just "We should be unapologetically conservative," but "I won, in a swing state no less, being unapologetically conservative." As Alec MacGillis described in a fascinating profile of Walker last year, he rose up in an area characterized by toxic racial politics as the tribune of angry white people. When he gets in front of a Republican audience, he tells them that everything they believe is right, and all the party has to do in order to win is be itself, but more so.
As Ed Kilgore says, "It's hard to overestimate how seductive this pitch is to conservatives tired of being told by Jeb Bush and every MSM pundit in America that they need to clean up their act and reach out to new constituencies to win back the White House." Reaching out is hard. It's a lot of work, and it might not pay off, but more importantly, it means changing at least some of what Republicans stand for. Who wants to do that?
The other reason that Walker could be a strong candidate is that he may be the only one in the field who can get the enthusiastic support of both the Tea Party base and the moneyed establishment. He can say he busted unions and restricted abortion rights.
But at this point, all that is hypothetical. Walker may turn out to be a disaster of a candidate, or he could be mediocre enough to stay in the race but not good enough to win. We won't know for a while yet. The media, though, is already impressed.
