"New 'Crystal Ball' frontrunner for GOP nomination: Scott Walker?"

Allahpundit says "it’s the first time I’ve seen a major elections analyst name Walker as the man to beat."

I agree with the basic outline: There’ll be a centrist champion, a right-wing champion, and then a compromise candidate who can draw from both camps. Sabato thinks that’s Christie, Rand Paul, and Walker, respectively. I think it’s likelier to be Christie, Cruz, and Rubio, with Rand Paul an X factor fueled by libertarians, but oh well.

Walker is the compromise and somebody else is right wing? That sounds so weird here in Madison.

Sabato lists one of Walker’s potential key disadvantages as being too bland a la Tim Pawlenty. Really? The guy who broke the unions in Wisconsin and then humiliated big labor by winning his recall fight? He won’t have a blandness problem. 

Could you watch the video of Walker in the recall debate and rethink why he wins around here (and by here I mean Wisconsin, not Madison)? I'm not sure people around the country really get the Midwestern style. If you know Walker for standing up to the noisy protesters, you may picture him out there fighting, but in fact, he stayed calm and mostly out of sight and waited for the protests to die down, which they eventually did. The GOP had the votes in the legislature, so they simply took action.
From my live-blog of the debate:

Walker says if he could do it all over again, he'd have explained what he was doing, and most people would have agreed. He fixed it [the budget], then talked about it.

It's easy to do something when you have the votes, harder to persuade everyone to accept it. He didn't try, and he admits he should have done better. You can say he was good at putting up with the outcry, but what choice did he have? Be silent or explain. He chose silence. He reminds me of George W. Bush who declined to defend himself when harshly criticized and trusted that in the long run people would understand. I can appreciate that and even find it admirable, but it might not work in a campaign.

When Scott Walker does campaign, he explains himself in a style that can be rejected as too bland. It's the opposite of flashy. It's earnest and Boy Scout.



Some people like that though. I do. I don't want my politician to be a rock star. Ironically, Walker's opponents called him a "rock star" and created the idea that he's a "rock star":