Scott Walker Remains Red in Blue State
By Perry Bacon Jr.
GREEN BAY, Wisconsin -- Most of the GOP governors elected in blue states in 2009 and 2010 amid the rise of the Tea Party have moved to the political middle as they sought re-election over the last year.
Then theres Scott Walker. The Wisconsin governor turned himself into a conservative hero and liberal pariah three months into his tenure by signing a law that severely curtailed the power of unions for state employees and then surviving a Democratic attempt to recall him over it.
Now, in a state that Obama won in both 2008 and 2012, Walker is running an unabashedly conservative re-election campaign, taking no steps to move to the left on policy and instead bragging of his role as a boogeyman to Democrats both here and nationally.
This is going to be a tough election. Last week we saw two of the national big government union bosses come into this state and say Im their No.1 target, he told the workers at a plant in Hudson, Wisconsin on Monday. (The head of the National Education Association recently called defeating Walker a top priority, while the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees says it has a score to settle with him.)
You know why? We took the power out of their hands.
In a second term, Walker is promising to require people who get food stamp benefits to pass drug tests, an idea that not only is barred by current federal law but is viewed by Democrats as stigmatizing the poor. He wants to expand a state-operated school vouchers program, another issue that sharply divides the two parties in Wisconsin.
The Republican has pledged to continue opposing Obamacare if he is re-elected and refuse hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, even as other GOP governors like New Jerseys Chris Christie and Ohios John Kasich have accepted the money.
These policies that he's implemented are not the policies that you'll hear espoused by, say, Governor Christie or Governor Romney or any of the establishment Republicans. This is conservatism here.
Walker is strongly defending the provision that stripped many collective bargaining rights from public employees and the voter ID law he signed early in his tenure.
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Scott Walker Remains Red in Blue State