New York Magazine suggests that the President's upcoming visit to Madison WI, is about cementing his legacy in terms of supporting Hillary Clinton by positioning Scott Walker as her presumptive 2016 GOP opponent.
There are of course other GOP Clown Car agendas since one of the sources of this point of view is Republico, where progressives and centrists are identified as being in agreement on a report by Larry Summers as "an important convergence of thought between the Democratic Party’s two wings."
Obama is heading to Madison, Wisconsin, to unveil his administration’s new rule to make overtime available to 5 million new Americans earning up to $50,000 a year. “The contrast between our approach on economic issues and the governor’s is emblematic of the contrast between the president and the Republican Party at large...
The Republican Party stands totally opposed to this entire line of thought, and nobody symbolizes that opposition more than Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin. Walker has singularly embodied the conservative view that prosperity requires crushing labor’s bargaining power, a conviction he has followed with a determination and success that has made him the darling of the Koch brothers and other elements of the Republican fund-raising base.
But the donor base has its worries about Walker. They may appreciate his slavish adherence to their economic ideology, but they worry about his nearly as slavish adherence to the Republican base’s social ideology. Walker has emitted restrictionist noises on immigration and endorsed a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The Republican donor class may be willing to support politicians who endorse those views if that’s what’s needed to elect politicians who can implement their economic program, but they are not willing to sacrifice electability to do so. And Republican strategists, report Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin, increasingly fear that Walker is crafting a profile helpful in a primary that will leave him vulnerable in a general election campaign.
The Obama administration is hardly hiding the political undertones of their announcement. The location and subject matter of the president’s speech are obviously designed to draw maximum ideological contrast between himself and Walker. The likely effect of such a trip will surely be to elevate Walker’s profile as the anti-Obama, rallying conservatives to his side, thus boosting his prospects of winning the nomination — and, if you share the horse-race analysis of fretful GOP consultants, elevating Clinton’s chances of winning in 2016. Maybe that isn’t an accident.