As the crowded field of GOP presidential candidates jockey for position, former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has some advice: Go bold, or go home.
Walker knows. The two-term governor broke the back of the Badger State’s public sector union and was the darling of the Republican primary field in 2015 until he suddenly wasn’t. By September of that year, his campaign had burned through its cash, and Walker was out months before the 2016 Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
“Strong ideas trump a bold record,” Walker told The Star News Network Wednesday on the Vicki McKenna Show. The pun was fully intended.
“It’s a lesson I learned from eight years ago standing right next to Donald Trump and Jeb Bush on that debate stage. When all of the consultants from Washington were telling us, ‘Oh, you’ve got this great record, you should run on it.’ Obviously, we weren’t opposed to it, but what did us in was, they were telling us play it safe and run on our record. No, voters want a bold agenda.”
Three more Republicans entered the chase for their party’s presidential nomination this week — North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and former Vice President Mike Pence. They joined former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and former President Donald Trump in the growing field.
Trump is by far the frontrunner, ahead of DeSantis, his nearest rival, by some 30 percentage points in the national polls. But Trump is facing a mountain of legal problems, although an incitement and other investigations to this point have seemingly only made the former president stronger in the polls.
Walker went up against Trump in the 2016 election cycle. At one point, the Wisconsin governor was a frontrunner. By late summer 2015, he was polling in asterisk territory and his campaign war chest was gone.
He said one of his biggest mistakes was not hammering home aggressive policy ideas in a clear and convincing manner as Trump did.
“The message I’m sending, whether it’s Donald Trump, who wants to be president again, or any of the other candidates, is you can’t just run on your record. You have to go out and spell out what you’re going to do,” the former governor said.
And Walker assembled a pretty impressive record into his second term as he jumped into the presidential ring. He took on and beat the big labor unions in his signature Act 10, a sweeping government reform law that redefined public sector collective bargaining and saved Wisconsin taxpayers billions of dollars. He became the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall campaign, driven by bitter big labor and the radical left. He turned a budget deficit into record surpluses and drove the largest tax cuts in Wisconsin history at the time. He signed bills on Voter ID, Second Amendment protections, and checks on government bureaucrats and the administrative state.
But those policy victories got Walker only so far in his presidential run.
“I wish I had spelled out things like a flat tax for the entire country, term limits for everybody in the federal government, things like sending all the authority back to the states and the school districts for education,” he said. “Those are just examples of big, bold ideas. We played it safe and it didn’t work out.”
Walker laid out his advice and counsel in a Wall Street Journal column published this week.
Walker said Trump was the only one of the mind-blowing 17 GOP candidates who voiced clear plans, including build the wall and drain the swamp.
“Whatever you think of those ideas, they were clear and anybody who wants to win in ’24 has to do that,” he said.
These days, the former governor serves as president of Young America’s Foundation (YAF). The young conservative organization is partnering with the Republican National Committee, Fox News and Rumble in hosting the first Republican Primary Debate, slated for August 21 in Milwaukee.
Trump has suggested he won’t attend. He also hasn’t committed to supporting the ultimate nominee if it isn’t him, a requirement to enter the debate stage.
What advice would Walker give to the candidates about debating with Trump? First, he said Trump needs to be there.
“He’s a prize fighter. I think a prize fighter belongs in the ring defending his title,” Walker said. “I think it will be too irresistible for him not to do that despite what others say.”
As far as the other presidential hopefuls, the former presidential candidate reiterated his advice about going bold.
“I would just ignore as much as possible President Trump because, to me, the only person that’s going to change a voter’s mind about Donald Trump is Donald Trump. Positive or negative, he’s the one who will convince people one way or the other,” Walker said.
“The other candidates would be wise to talk about their bold plans, how they’re going to do them, and why they can and will beat Joe Biden. Anything else is just getting into the kind of fight the left wants and that’s just candidates beating each other up.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Scott Walker” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
