Scott Walker, once widely regarded as a 'comer', as a guy who could put Jeb! in a box and nail down the lid, is turning into another Koch-fuelled nightmare.
Yeah, I know...it's a real shame.
In an entertaining piece over at The Daily Beast, Betsy Woodruff examines just why Walker, who was supposed to be a sure-fire gusher has turned into a dry well.
The answer, says Woodruff, lies in Walker's seeming inability to follow the Biblical admonition in James 5:12 and '...let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.'
Walker just can't stop saying 'yes'...even when he actually means 'no'. Writes Woodruff:
There’s a funny thing about the former Republican presidential frontrunner: The governor has a curious verbal tic—well known among some Walker watchers but largely ignored by everyone else—where, well, he says yes to everything.
Ask him a question at a press conference or in a gaggle, and he’ll bob his head up and down while saying something like “Yeah” or “Yeah, absolutely.” He says that the way other people might say “Um,” or “Listen,” or “Hmm.” It’s a filler word.
But here’s the thing: Not everyone knows that.
And it seems to be quietly draining the blood from his campaign.
Gee, that's too bad. Woodruff cites Walker's problematic answer to the 'birthright citizen' question. When asked, Walker replied:
“Yeah,” he replied. “To me it’s about enforcing the laws in this country. And I’ve been very clear, I think you enforce the laws, and I think it’s important to send a message that we’re going to enforce the laws, no matter how people come here we’re going to enforce the laws in this country.”
If you parse that answer, Walker never really says he thinks that the kids of undocumented immigrants who are born here shouldn’t have citizenship rights.
Knock off the “yeah,” and it’s a typical non-answer like the ones other presidential candidates give every day. His campaign tried to explain that he didn’t mean “yeah” when he said “yeah,” but with minimal success.
Apparently, this verbal tic of Walker's has long been known. Woodruff quotes Wisconsin conservative radio host Charlie Sykes, who wrote
on Right Wisconsin:
...this may be due to Walker’s unfortunate verbal tick where he answers questions with what appears to be an affirmative before giving his intended answer,” Sykes wrote on Right Wisconsin. “If a reporter approached him at the Paducah County Fair and asked Walker if he supported a federal plan to beat baby whales to death with the bodies of baby whales, Walker might reply, ‘Yeah…. But what we should focus on is returning power to the states and the …’”
In a passage that made me laugh like a hyena, Woodruff goes on:
In one case, the governor’s overeager affirmation turned into an attack ad. In the lead-up to his 2014 reelection bid, the state’s Democratic party put up a web video that showed the governor nodding yes as a reporter asked him if he was at the center of a criminal scheme.
Unsurprisingly, Democrats turned that little bit of derp into an attack ad (and got awarded a 'Pants on Fire' rating by Politifact, because shortly after the nodding, Walker said no, he wasn't a criminal but that didn't make the edit).
And Walker just keeps on keeping on:
The governor’s latest verbal struggle—when he suggested we should build a wall along the Northern border to keep out dangerous Canadian immigrants—is a variant of this tic. On Meet the Press on Sunday, host Chuck Todd asked the governor if he thought we needed such a wall.
“Some people have asked us about that in New Hampshire,” Walker replied. “They raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought that up to me at one of our town hall meetings about a week and a half ago. So that is a legitimate issue for us to look at.”
Opoien chalks this up as another example of Walker’s over-eagerness to answer things in the affirmative.
“Him saying something’s worth looking at or worth considering is a really common answer he’s given on things like Right to Work or the 20-week abortion ban,” she said. “He doesn’t want to get nailed down on it, and he’ll say it’s worth looking at or worth considering or that’s something we’ll look at in the future.”
In other words, being shifty and non-committal; color me shocked. Woodruff ends her piece with:
Walker doesn’t really have a good explanation for his “yeah” problem; “When I say yeah, I mean um” isn’t exactly great TV ad content. And, thus, some of his campaign’s biggest blows are self-inflicted.
Long may he continue to self-inflict them.
According to Real Clear Politics latest (RCP average) polling, Walker (at 5.5%) is trailing Trump, Carson, Bush, Rubio, Cruz and Fiorina.
It sure is fun watching the vile Koch brothers burning mountains of their cash to no visible effect: keep fucking that chicken, boys.