Why I bash Scott Walker

Scott Walker is beginning to feel the heat. A year and a half before the election, he is already starting to squeal.

One of his top operatives complained Thursday about Walker's treatment in the Xoff Files. Then Walker himself accused Governor Jim Doyle and his allies of waging a "campaign of fear" that's getting Walker some negative press.

Brian Fraley, longtime GOP operative and part of the firm running Walker's campaign, posted a comment on this site asking me why I spend so much time writing about Walker.

Fraley writes: "Sure seems as if the Doyle Machine is mighty worried about Scott Walker (full disclosure, he's a client). Bill, what on earth would you Blog about without Walker? Seems like more than half your posts are focused on trying to tear him down."

I do bash Walker quite a bit, I'll admit. It's probably more like 10% of my posts than half, but if you're Walker it might seem like half.

Why do I do it?

1. It's fun.

2. Walker is eminently bashable.

3. He deserves it.

Walker and Fraley would like to believe Walker is the target because Doyle is somehow afraid of having to run against him. I can't speak for the governor (I gave up that job awhile back and have no Doyle role), but I will tell you that I hope Scott Walker is the Republican nominee. He is eminently beatable for the same reasons he is eminently bashable.

Scott Walker is a phony. He's not who he pretends to be. He hasn't kept the promises he made when he ran for office. He's tried to cover up his failures and mistakes. And he's never, never taken responsibility himself for anything that has gone wrong since he became Milwaukee County executive.

Whether it's budget blowups, breaking the election laws, cutting key social programs, or dozens of other foulups that have happened on his short watch, Walker has always pointed the finger somewhere else.

Now he tells a WisPolitics luncheon that Doyle is responsible for the bad press he's gotten on a failed, risky pension bonding scheme that the voters rejected, and for his violations of the election laws.

Fraley's comment to me came after a posting I did this week about Walker's hypocritical letter to his county corporation counsel. Walker chastised William Domina for sending one political e-mail offering to help on a school referendum,, when Walker himself had sent hundreds of e-mails from the county system urging a "yes" vote on the pension referendum.

I didn't write about that because I'm afraid Walker will be the nominee. I wrote it because Walker painted a target on his chest and offered a free shot. It's an example of how bashable he is. Who could resist?

The Domina affair was so good that the Journal Sentinel's Laurel Walker(no relation, I guess), a columnist in the paper's Waukesha bureau, couldn't resist it, either. The last I knew she was not a Doyle operative. And she laid it on pretty well. Read for yourself.

If Walker is getting negative media coverage, he has only himself to blame. But that's something he never does.

The Trust Issue

Walker claimed at the WisPol luncheon that the difference between him and Doyle is trust.

""[Doyle] is someone who as a candidate said one thing and did something dramatically different when he came into office," Walker said.

Scott Walker, meet Scott Walker's record:

Walker said if people elected him county exec he would freeze or reduce the property tax levy. It has actually gone up since he was elected. He blames the county board. (Maybe when he was running he thought he could set the levy all by himself?)

Walker the candidate said he wouldn't raise fees. In his first two years in office, he raised dozens of fees. They went up 26% overall.

Walker said he would clean up the county pension scandal, and as part of that would make every person who was appointed by him sign waivers of the huge pension payouts. But he didn't do it for 62 of his appointees, including some who worked in his own office. When he was called on it during his re-election campaign last year, he bobbed and weaved, manipulated the open records law and misled the public about what he had done.

(Walker's camp will say that all of these issues were raised in last year's county executive race, which he won handily. True, but he was the incumbent and odds-on favorite and was not subjected to the kind of media scrutiny he will experience in a governor's race, in which he correctly describes himself as the underdog.)

There's more, but that's enough to see the pattern.

Walker presented himself as a reformer, a different kind of candidate, someone who would operate differently, clean up the mess, fix the county's financial crisis, and reduce taxes.

Instead, he has turned out to be just another typical politician -- one who will say anything to get elected, but feels no obligation to follow through once he's in office.

So that, in short, is why I bash Scott Walker. I'll share more specific reasons with you between now and the 2006 election.

Mark Green, the other GOP candidate for governor, will get his share, too. (In fact, he's been mentioned in 19 posts compared to Walker's 25.) It's just that Walker is right here in Milwaukee, under my nose, and just keeps on being so bashable.

Any further complaints?