The New York Times is reporting that this evening, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker will announce that he's dropping out of contention for the GOP presidential nomination. Though he was once a frontrunner in Iowa, his campaign has long been struggling for notoriety-a chronic problem now for many candidates competing with The Donald.
The latest CNN poll showed Walker's support in Iowa at about one-half of 1 percent. His campaign was counting on a strong performance in the second debate to bolster both his poll numbers and donor base. That didn't work out so well.
As I wrote last week, another indication of the increasing desperation of his campaign was the unveiling of his incredibly anti-worker and anti-union plan that would kill the NLRB, gut federal public-sector unions, and make the country one giant right-to-work wasteland. The move seemed to be a last-minute attempt to remind well-heeled big-business donors that he was the de facto candidate for big business and would stand up to the oppressive organized-labor regime.
According to the Times, donors didn't respond as expected. "Everyone I know was just totally stunned by how difficult the fund-raising became, but the candidate and the campaign just couldn't inspire confidence," one donor said.
There are a few important takeaways from Walker's impending departure:
- His early adornment as the Koch brothers' political lackey appears to not have been enough to earn Tea Party support in Iowa or New Hampshire. It will be interesting to parse out in the coming days just how much of a role the Kochs had in his dropping out-and the disappearance of his donor base.
- Speculation that all these GOP candidates will be able to lean on their well-funded affiliated super PACs, no matter their polling numbers, has so far proven to be false, twice: Rick Perry had millions in his super PAC coffers, and Scott Walker's Unintimidated PAC was well-funded, too.
- An anti-labor agenda doesn't seem to have much national appeal. Unions have more public support than they've had in years, and in an age of unprecedented income inequality, voters are better able to see through policies that are directly intended to decrease the power of the middle class.
As the AFL-CIO succinctly puts it, "Scott Walker is still a disgrace, just no longer national."
