In late January and early this month, Scott Walker generated plenty of buzz among lefty bloggers, who deplored his views but acknowledged his considerable strengths as a candidate. Now, in light of Walker’s “punt” on evolution and his alleged fumbles regarding President Obama’s patriotism and religious beliefs, they’re wondering if Walker has the guts to confront the crazies in the Republican base, or if he won’t do it because he himself is a little crazy. Three bloggers weighed in Monday on those and other Walker-related issues.
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait opined that questioning Walker about Obama’s character pertains to the crucial challenge for the GOP’s 2016 presidential candidates: “their relationship with the most stark-raving-mad beliefs of the conservative base” (bolding added):
The question at issue is the right-wing conviction that Obama represents a unique and alien threat to American life. Versions of this belief have held, in descending increments of paranoia, that Obama concealed his overseas birth, that he has concealed his religious beliefs, and that he is vaguely plotting to harm America…
While paranoid suspicions about Obama are not a direct policy issue, they serve as a proxy for positioning within the Republican Party…
Walker dismissed the question of Obama’s religion as a gotcha game by campaign reporters fixated on trivia. It is certainly inconvenient for Republican candidates to face questions that force them to define their relationship with the most stark-raving-mad beliefs of the conservative base. But that relationship is the most important question the candidates will navigate, both during their campaign and while governing. Free-floating paranoia is not an esoteric point of trivia; it is a central feature of conservative-movement thought.
Paul Waldman of the American Prospect remarked that Walker seems to be yet another GOP politician who believes that to make headway with the base, he has to “indulge [the] fears and resentments and bigotries” of a bunch of “lunatics” (bolding added):
Republican voters are still convinced that Barack Obama is The Other, an alien presence occupying an office he doesn't deserve. He might say that he was born in the United States, he might say that he's a Christian, he might say that he loves the country he leads, but they know better. And if you want their favor, so many Republican politicians think, you'd better indulge their fears and resentments and bigotries.
…This question [about Obama’s religion] does actually reveal something worth knowing about Walker, because it's rooted in today's Republican Party.
It tells us that Walker is (as yet anyway) unwilling to stand up to the Republican primary electorate's ample population of lunatics, the people who think Barack Obama is a Mooslem Marxist foreigner enacting his secret Alinskyite plan to destroy America. Depending on which poll you read, those people may constitute a majority of Republican voters. Walker is either afraid to alienate them, or perhaps he genuinely shares many of their beliefs.
Finally, Amanda Marcotte, in a Talking Points Memo column, asserted that there’s an “excellent chance” Walker’s handling of those hot-potato questions will appeal to both the Tea Party crowd and the GOP establishment:
For the rightwing ideologues, hearing Walker punt on issues like ISIS or whether or not Obama is a secret Muslim feeds right into their paranoid narratives about how the evil liberal media is suppressing rightwing truths. “He secretly agrees with us,” the narrative goes, “but he can’t say so out loud without being crucified by the liberal media.”
For those Republicans who don’t actually buy the birther narratives about Obama or who don’t reject the theory of evolution, however, the signal sent by Walker’s dunno posturing is a little different. To them, it’s: “He’s not an imbecile, but he has to play to the rubes in order to win Iowa.”
…[T]here’s an excellent chance that Walker’s little dance will work. Tea Party types get to have their victimization narrative flattered and elites get to have their sense that they’re bamboozling the rubes.
