It’s a day late for April Fools’ pranks, but Scott Walker still has his poker face on. He’s still working on a book titled Unintimidated. Still winking and nudging his way toward the shallow end of the GOP presidential gene pool. Still turning congenial Wisconsin into something resembling a Foster’s-fueled rugby scrum.
It’s an odd spectacle, and a little scary. Odd, because so far Walker hasn’t really proven anything except that he can promote a radical agenda and get himself un-unelected with a little jobs-numbers alchemy. Scary, because he can’t help but remind one of George W. Bush on the road to Baghdad.
Of course, God told Bush to invade Iraq. God knows who’s telling Walker to stay the course.
So far, that course is putting Wisconsin farther and farther behind the rest of the U.S. – at least when it comes to job creation. Yes, folks, according to the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (the same data set Walker used to pull his fat out of the fire last June), we’re now 44th in the nation in private-sector job creation (the only kind Republicans seem to care about) based on the September 2011 to September 2012 period. This is a further drop from our (revised) 41st ranking in the June 2011-12 period and 37th in the March 2011-12 period. Incidentally, the year before Walker took office and unveiled his economic plan (which as far as I can tell is almost entirely based on turning down free money and making sure large numbers of consumers have less disposable income than they used to), we ranked 11th.
But that’s not stopping our governor. Rather than be chastened by these figures, he’s emboldened. “Unintimidated.” It’s a great title, and well reflects our dear leader. Cocksure. Defiant. Simple.
Put it right alongside “Mission Accomplished” and “watch now as my partner, Roy, whose deep desert tan makes him look nothing like a grocery store rotisserie chicken, lovingly taunts this very tame tiger.”
Unfortunately, we’ve entered an age during which it’s seen as much more dignified to stubbornly stick to one’s guns than to admit fault of any kind. Both sides do this, but Republicans – or some of them anyway – seem to have taken it to an art form. They have their own climate science. They’ve jerry-rigged an elaborate paleontological theory that allows them to continue believing in stories about talking snakes and a 950-year-old Middle Eastern man who floated around for 40 days on a boat with kangaroos, giraffes, and a cabinet full of malaria and smallpox cultures. They continue to flog abstinence-only education. And don’t forget Republican rape theory, one of the most exciting fields of academic study to emerge in decades.
And then there was Iraq. The 10th anniversary of that war just passed, but I’ve yet to hear anything close to the conservative mea culpas one might have expected, considering the braying about WMDs and shouts of “traitor” we liberals heard almost constantly during the run-up to the war. Instead, in the invasion’s aftermath, the GOP rhetoric was simply fine-tuned.
Hey, we’re dredging up the past here, but if you don’t see parallels between George W. Bush’s “I’m the decider” obstinacy and Scott Walker’s good-old-boy fortitude, you’re not paying close attention.
Before the speculation about Walker’s presidential prospects goes any further, we need to ask ourselves: Do we really need another president who’s unintimidated by reality?
I have no doubt George W. Bush loved this country the whole time he was president … like Lenny from Of Mice and Men loved rabbits.
Scott Walker probably loves Wisconsin, too. Unfortunately, that’s just not enough.
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