(Wisconsinites see much deeper deficits. The Press has a duty to broadcast these to the nation.)
A recent puff-piece suggested Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the white-bread Republican candidate in all but name for the 2016 presidential election, has hit a few bumps in the road during his “Not-Campaigning Campaign Tour.”
“Scott Walker's Style Concerns Some Republicans,” a recent NBC News story, did a disservice to readers by failing to expose the darker, fundamentally dysfunctional nature of Walker's problems.
Republicans retain far too much control of a shifty, slippery narrative in this article by Leigh Ann Caldwell. And what Walker's image makers and apologists don't talk about is the real story.
The contorted and extreme lengths they go to in mischaracterizing Walker's gaffes, evasions, bumbling, corruption and rank unsuitability for any public office have long been laughable. These enablers, be they rubber stamp puppets in the state legislature or long-time cronies, are as much to blame for the retrograde state economy and its consistently sluggish performance (and pathetic recovery from the Great Recession) as is Walker.
They do so by re-branding his failures and deficits as strengths and virtues. Fear-driven, low-information voters lap up these fantasies and are restored to a state of delusion that says, “Everything is okay. Really. He didn't deceive us. We weren't wrong to vote for him. Just repeat the mantra. 'Facts don't matter'...”
One of the most astounding abuses in the article is this sloppy segue:
“Mark Graul, a longtime Wisconsin political operative who has known Walker since their early 20s...said it's ridiculous that Walker should be criticized because he's good at his job.”
I remain baffled that an editor let that sentence pass muster. I remain baffled, too, that an actual journalist would include it.
“Why?” you ask.
Nowhere in this article is anyone quoted as saying that Walker is good at his job.
One more time:
Nowhere in this article is anyone, anyone, quoted as saying that Walker is good at his job, the job of governor, the job for which he took an oath of office. He has won several elections, or rather, several elections were purchased for him, including a recall election. Apologists now cower in fear and dread behind this talking point, lest voters engage in extended discussion of Walker's constant Koch-ordered missteps. These proofs of Walker's malpractice sent the state spiraling down into an economic coma. Prognosis? Uncertain. Last Rites have been given...
Even stranger, nowhere in this article is anyone quoted as saying that this untenable, unbelievable premise has led to the bizarre assertion that Walker is being criticized for it.
This sentence just flew in from Pluto, and boy is it tired. What is it doing in the article?
Any active reader asks, “What the hell!?” because Graul's word-salad is unconnected to the subject of the article, Walker's alleged “style” problem. It's a truly amateurish attempt at spin, this sentence, a wingnut wet dream. Graul's clumsy attempt to fabricate a conflict, to insinuate Walker possesses a competence that is actually nowhere to be found in the man, falls flat. Graul is praising a straw man.
Clarity is not just around the corner, my friends. Read on. But have some wrinkle cream handy, because the repeated wincing you experience may linger for several months, and frighten children and puppies.
Caldwell surrenders all journalistic integrity and rigor by allowing Graul to spew:
“I don't buy that argument that because he's so good when it comes to communications and relateability that people mistake that as a problem.”
Gentle reader, I am not making this up. Graul said it. Granted, he has also not identified his home planet, but it should be obvious that he is not tuned into reality here on the third rock from the sun. Maybe our gravity is tugging too hard on his cranium. That or coherence is not a prized trait on his home world.
Not once does Caldwell challenge Graul's absurd allegations.
The Scott Walker we know cannot be described as “good at communications.” He never breathed a word during his campaign to become governor that he would attack public sector unions. If he had? Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett would be governor, and averted much of the economic malaise Walker ushered in. Walker did so through willful ignorance of economics. But also credit his puppy-like adoration of every gaseous exhalation that ushers from the orifices of Charles and David Koch...
“Good at communications?” The Scott Walker we know let his aides do campaign work while on the public payroll (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, smile and knowing glance moment, folks). As Milwaukee County Executive, Walker's desk was scarce feet away from those of the very aides who were convicted of these crimes. Walker, the supposed good communicator, alleges he never knew this illegal activity was happening so close by.
Somehow the “good communicator” never communicated to his aides that no campaign-related activities could be pursued while they were “on the clock,” that such activity was illegal. Principled leadership and integrity were placed on mandatory leave, eh?
Governor “good communicator” also got caught trying to rewrite the University of Wisconsin Mission Statement. Walker, a college dropout hostile to public education at all levels and eager to slash, truly eviscerate, funding for same, “communicated” to reporters that no, he was not trying to change the mission of the state's world-class university system, to make it more vocational. Walker's incredible blunder reeks of ignorance and redundancy, since the state has technical colleges already providing such training.
No, Walker claimed, this kerfluffle was a much ado about nothing, just the reporters' discovery of a “drafting error.”
Reporters “communicated” back to Walker that they had the evidence to prove they had caught him in a lie, namely, emails and statements, some several months old, from university officials alarmed by Walker's ham-handed and unwelcome editing of the UW Mission Statement. Walker ignored and dismissed their objections. Tsk, tsk...communication, Scotty, is a two-way street...
“Good communicator” Walker also seems to have trouble “communicating” with people trained in and practicing the dance of foreign affairs, and trouble communicating with the press. Odd, since both professions produce master communicators. While bumbling through a press conference at Chatham House, an international affairs think tank in London, Wisconsin's chief “good communicator” dodged several foreign policy questions.
Allow the irony to wash over you in waves. He speaks at an international affairs think tank, and dodges foreign policy questions.
Say, what is that on the foreign policy horizon? Tsunami? Could it be a looming war in the Middle East, the fruit of Republican foreign policy ignorance and ethnocentrism on a scale that may surpass even that of George Bush and the chickenhawks in his party and his administration?
Recall that an attack on the World Trade Center by Saudi puppets, guided by a Saudi playboy, compelled the Bush Administration to railroad an invasion and incredibly inept occupation of...uh, Iraq. Huh? Walk me through that reasoning again, real slow now...
One trembles, clammy with dread and sensing large-scale destruction looming, should a provincial dolt like Walker be given the opportunity to misjudge, mischaracterize and overreact to world events. That proverbial 3am phone call? Walker would do what he always does when called to accountability and responsibility; fumble, stumble and have an aide fall on his sword to protect him.
Governor “good communicator” also “punted” (his word) when given the opportunity to comment on the topic of evolution. Wouldn't want to upset the grab bag of goofballs who bristle at scientific evidence that their worldview is wanting, is not immutable. Walker's waffling on the human causes of accelerated climate change also betrays his beholden-to-the-Energy-Oligarchs status. Seems he just won't “communicate” with professional fact-finders in the sciences.
But Graul also uttered some blather about Walker's “relateability.” This alleged quality, like his supposed “good communications” skills, is also conspicuous in Walker by its absence. For evidence, look no further than the other Republicans and apologists quoted in the article.
Former State Senator Ted Kanavas (R): Walker “basically takes his own counsel.” Kanavas attempts to cut off any criticism of such a deficit by quickly adding, “Walker's insular nature ends up being a "simple bandwidth problem.”
An aide to former four-term Republican Governor Tommy Thompson: “Walker doesn't call and ask for advice.” He added, “It's hard to break through the Walker and Tonette (his wife) power structure.”
Caldwell does drop the bomb that Walker “...is not one to socialize with members of the legislature.” More disturbing: Walker does not “engage in extended policy discussions.”
From the head of a PR firm supporting the governor: Walker is “hard guy to talk to. He doesn't take counsel from anybody.”
Indeed, as noted earlier, Walker had a plan to rob members of public sector unions, a plan with no basis in sound economics, a plan straight from the Americans for Prosperity playbook, care of Walker's puppet masters, the Koch brothers. He shared none of this plan, or his intentions, with voters or with members of his own party. Caldwell lets stand Walker's assertion that the idea was his alone. No, Mr. “no-ideas” borrowed that still-born economic changeling. Walker, you see, cannot even take credit for manifestly stupid ideas. He is a mere mouthpiece, like other Republican governors such as Brownback of Kansas and Rauner of Illinois, idiots all.
Gentle reader, are you detecting what can fairly be called “relateability” problems? Can you sleep soundly at night believing this man, who aspires to the office of chief executive of the United States, has a “simple bandwidth problem,” stemming in part from his “power structure?” Will the nation be served well by a man with a “lone gunman” mentality, a man with an “insular nature,” a my-way, no-discussion-no-debate-no-facts-please provincial sociopath?
No.
The latest “explanations” of Walker's “achievements” and “virtues” have reached levels both astronomical and delusional. These rationalizations, hissing from the mouths of Republican reptiles like lurid promises whispered into Eve's ear, paint a picture of an imaginary man. Were that specter to run for office, he might prove more responsible, more capable, more honest and more deserving of praise than the creature known as Scott Walker.
But the season of political campaigning sweeps across the nation like an epidemic. It attacks the centers of reason and logic in low-information voters, leaving them vulnerable to “feelings” about candidates while rendering their cognition impervious to facts and history.
Ah, the romance of conservative political partying, that pageant of perjurers, that steaming pile of plagiarists and panderers. See how ham-handedly these puppets cattle prod the mass of low-information voters. Witness, too, the tragedy of journalists slinking away from their responsibility to expose all frauds and felons, all snakes and sociopaths.
To waste a single sentence suggesting that Walker's talent for leaving disaster in his wake is a mere “style” problem is to indulge a whopping conceit that his deficits are cosmetic, superficial, just need a bit of face paint. Or perhaps the puppet needs a new layer of papier mache.
No, Walker's stumbles, gaffes and clumsy backtracking betray far more than mere “style” problems. Walker has elemental deficits of content and character, profound psycho-social maladies he has refused to examine. Wisconsin has paid dearly for ignoring the creature behind the mask.
“Style” is not a topic befitting the serious nature of this looming presidential election. Will the GOP be allowed to sell out government to the highest bidder (thank you John Roberts and your junior conservative sociopaths on the Supreme Court), via the monumentally absurd Citizens United and related rulings?
Walker, the paragon of paranoid pettiness, Micromanagerius Maximus, the sum of all moral vacuums, has reached the nadir of his ascension. He can scarce go lower. Try as he may to ape the requirements of higher office, whatever pretensions to growth he may don, he remains the same papier mache puppet. And like a puppet, Walker cannot grow. He isn't real. His eyes don't see (the disaster he creates), his ears don't hear (the corrective measures needed), and the words dribbling from his pie hole are not his own.
Let the Republiclown machine, the Koch-baal, and the low-information conservative voter project all odd manner of imagined virtues and strengths into this holograph. He cannot contain or support any of these qualities. They are a mask that grows too heavy for such a nonentity to bear.
In the private sector, Walker's lack of communication skills, lack of relateability, his insular nature and his dysfunctional power structure (the skill set he used to keep his Koch-devised agenda hidden) would find him managing a fast-food chain, his sociopathic tendencies lavished on employees who do not realize they can rebel against his pathology. It is time Wisconsinites recognized the same. This hollow, corrupt, ignorant and dangerous creature must go.
Walker schemes to sneak into higher office, desperate to escape the drudgery and accountability (read: actual work) required to clean up the mess he made of the state economy. He escaped his prior post as Milwaukee County Executive in identical circumstances. Milwaukee County government is still reeling from the dereliction of duty Walker practiced as Milwaukee County Executive.
And as he did in that office, Walker is now spending much of his time ignoring and evading his responsibilities and his duties as governor, while practicing his true and profoundly dysfunctional vocation: eternal campaigner. He hungers for and chases the glory and power of higher office. He just doesn't want the actual responsibility that attends it.
http://www.nbcnews.com/...