The company he keeps: real and fake
There is no way to truly prepare to be President. Even a governor presides over just a tiny segment of society compared to the fourth largest country in the world with the third largest population; and obtains zero experience in foreign affairs. That is why character is so important in determining which political leaders vying to replace Barack Obama in 2016 have the 'right stuff' to govern all 320,000,000 of us in 3,700,000 square miles.
That brings us to consider Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, one of the GOP luminaries most certainly seeking to oppose likely Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton. Walker has been a state assembly representative, Milwaukee County Executive and currently finishing his 2010 term as governor of a state with less than 2% of both the nation's population and land area. So what can we determine about Mr. Walker's character? Let's start with his eight year term as Milwaukee County Executive from 2002 to 2010. Three of Walker's former aides and several associates were convicted of crimes related to Walker campaign work being done by employees on county time. The investigation revealed emails which cast a dreadful culture of racial and cultural insensitivity in the Walker administration. A former Walker Chief of Staff sent around this dousey: “I can handle being a black, disabled, one-armed, drug-addicted, Jewish homosexual on a pacemaker who is H.I.V.-positive, bald, orphaned, unemployed, lives in a slum, and has a Mexican boyfriend, but please, Oh dear God, please don’t tell me I’m a Democrat!." Walker had to fire a campaign official for tweeting this about a bus ride she took: “This bus is my worst [expletive] nightmare Nobody speaks English & these ppl dont know how 2 control their kids #only3morehours #illegalaliens.” Don't forget Kelly Rindfleisch, Walker's deputy chief of staff who emailed "It's so true" to a friend who suggested that a photo of four dogs make them good welfare candidates because they were “mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddys are.”
But the most damning character issue exchange involved the governor himself. When pro unions folks took over the state capitol to protest Walker's union busting laws which took away the teacher unions collective bargaining, Walker was recording talking to a journalist pretending to be fossil fuel billionaire David Koch of Koch Industries. Walker and the fake David Koch talked about possibly using hired agitators to break up the protesters:
Fake David Koch: "We'll back you any way we can. But what we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers."
Real Gov. Walker: "We thought about that...but we don't want to scare the public into thinking maybe the governor has to settle to avoid all these problems."
If Walker was not making up that nonsense to ingratiate himself with the fake David Koch, then he actually contemplated illegal, outrageous and truly dangerous methods which he only rejected, according to his words, because he thought they might backfire on him politically. In the case of Governor Scott Walker, we not only have to be concerned about the real company he keeps. We also have to consider the fake company he keeps.
That brings us to consider Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, one of the GOP luminaries most certainly seeking to oppose likely Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton. Walker has been a state assembly representative, Milwaukee County Executive and currently finishing his 2010 term as governor of a state with less than 2% of both the nation's population and land area. So what can we determine about Mr. Walker's character? Let's start with his eight year term as Milwaukee County Executive from 2002 to 2010. Three of Walker's former aides and several associates were convicted of crimes related to Walker campaign work being done by employees on county time. The investigation revealed emails which cast a dreadful culture of racial and cultural insensitivity in the Walker administration. A former Walker Chief of Staff sent around this dousey: “I can handle being a black, disabled, one-armed, drug-addicted, Jewish homosexual on a pacemaker who is H.I.V.-positive, bald, orphaned, unemployed, lives in a slum, and has a Mexican boyfriend, but please, Oh dear God, please don’t tell me I’m a Democrat!." Walker had to fire a campaign official for tweeting this about a bus ride she took: “This bus is my worst [expletive] nightmare Nobody speaks English & these ppl dont know how 2 control their kids #only3morehours #illegalaliens.” Don't forget Kelly Rindfleisch, Walker's deputy chief of staff who emailed "It's so true" to a friend who suggested that a photo of four dogs make them good welfare candidates because they were “mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddys are.”
But the most damning character issue exchange involved the governor himself. When pro unions folks took over the state capitol to protest Walker's union busting laws which took away the teacher unions collective bargaining, Walker was recording talking to a journalist pretending to be fossil fuel billionaire David Koch of Koch Industries. Walker and the fake David Koch talked about possibly using hired agitators to break up the protesters:
Fake David Koch: "We'll back you any way we can. But what we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers."
Real Gov. Walker: "We thought about that...but we don't want to scare the public into thinking maybe the governor has to settle to avoid all these problems."
If Walker was not making up that nonsense to ingratiate himself with the fake David Koch, then he actually contemplated illegal, outrageous and truly dangerous methods which he only rejected, according to his words, because he thought they might backfire on him politically. In the case of Governor Scott Walker, we not only have to be concerned about the real company he keeps. We also have to consider the fake company he keeps.
posted by Walt Zlotow at 12:27 PM
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