Just a month ago, Scott Walker was quietly riding high, the front-runner in the first GOP contest, Iowa, preferred by 22 percent of Republicans there. Walker was the outsider politician, the bare-knuckle fighter who had stood up to the unions and won — in a purple state! Walker was a pastor’s kid to boot, with a pro-life voting record, and he spun charming stories of shopping at Kohl’s — all to make it clear that he is no Romney rich dude.
True, Walker didn’t talk about social issues much, but that just made him more desirable: the kind of guy who could not only unite Evangelicals and economic conservatives, but also bridge that more elusive divide between donors and grassroots activists. Walker was the hardcore conservative who could win.
But over the last month, Walker’s front-runner status has, well, “quietly collapsed,” as my American Principles Project colleague Frank Cannon recently put it.
Every week since that 22-point high, Walker has shed two or three points of support. The latest Iowa poll has him at just 9 percent.
It is not that Donald Trump is surging. Despite the hype, it is pretty clear that Trump’s debate performance hurt him with core Republicans. The new Suffolk poll shows him at 17 points in Iowa, down from his mid-July, pre-debate high. And in New Hampshire, his lead has dropped to 5 points, according to a Boston Herald poll, his smallest margin since June. Trump’s hardcore fans will never desert him in droves, but he seems for the moment to have capped his upside, as conservative voters learn how weak his ties to the Republican party are and how many left-wing positions he has taken, from favoring national health insurance to being pro-choice and even (as of this week) supporting the funding of Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion-related activities.
How many Republican primary voters really want to vote for a Republican candidate who was for Obama in 2008 and invited Hillary Clinton to his wedding?
Trump’s little post-debate spat with Megyn Kelly was positively unpresidential, and even unmanly. (Memo to The Donald: Whining about a woman asking you meanie-poo questions isn’t exactly John Waynesque.)
#related#“He’s the Omarosa of American politics,” says a friend. Trump attracts attention and fans with his angry firepower, but he doesn’t get the job in the end. Or better, Donald Trump is this generation’s Spiro Agnew, winning fans not so much for what he supports as for who hates him.
Frank Cannon (who in addition to being president of the American Principles Project, where I work, is political consultant to the powerhouse Susan B. Anthony List) points to the rise of the outsider candidates, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson (plus Trump), as the reason for Walker’s slump.
Scott Walker’s own Wisconsin Nice demeanor may also be part of the problem. (Wisconsin Nice, for those of you who do not speak Midwestern, is Minnesota Nice without the Ice.) Right now, Walker is looking like the Tim Pawlenty of this election cycle. It is hard to stand out in a crowd of 17 candidates, and harder still to remain the fresh new face, but hardest of all? To look like the baddest boy on the block when you’re going nose to nose with Donald Trump.