Unless you’ve been in a cave since yesterday morning, you know that Scott Walker dropped out of the governor’s race yesterday afternoon. That leaves Mark Green to take on Jim “Craps” Doyle (WEAC/Potawatomi-For Sale). I don’t think I’ve made it much of a secret that I supported Walker in the Republican nomination, and I am sad to see him drop out because of a combination of a lack of money and the RPW (and indeed, the RNC) standard operating procedure to back the least-conservative of multiple candidates at all costs (in the RPW’s case, even pulling the rug out from the conservative should he survive the party bosses’ attempts to rig the primary). In this specific case, other than Green being in the same back pocket of ADM that Doyle is, he appears to be not much less conservative than Walker. Further, I’m relieved that the money differential won’t be magnified by a bitter and expensive primary fight.
Tomorrow’s Sunday Insight with Charlie Sykes (10 am, Channel 4 in Milwaukee) will be a much-watch as Charlie dumped the regularily-scheduled format for an interview with Walker. Judging from the inaugural podcast he and Jeff Wagner did, it will be must-see TV. I will try to live-blog it.
It will be good to still have an upstanding young man (Walker’s only 38) here in charge of Milwaukee County for at least the next 2 years instead of a thug like Lee Holloway, who, assuming Walker would have been elected governor, would have assumed the duties of county executive effective Walker’s swearing-in. He ruled out jumping into the Senate race against Nobody’s Senator, Herb Kohl.
Beyond this helping Green and hurting Doyle, who now must start “prematurely” spending his massive war chest funded by WEAC, the Indian casinos, the trial lawyers, Archer Daniels Midland, and everybody else that bought Wisconsin policy the last 3 years, there are some other winners and losers. Paul Bucher has to be wondering whether Milwaukee County Pubbies and conservatives will be voting in the Republican Attorney General primary (and presumably for him) or the Democratic Sheriff primary for David Clarke. Over on the Dem side of that race, it wasn’t a coincidence that the chorus of “Damn it”s from Madistan had a high-pitched tone; both Kathleen Falk and Peg Lautenschlager are sweating it out to see which one of them is deemed the weaker candidate by those of us in Milwaukee County (and perhaps elsewhere) interested in not seeing a Dem in that office next year and no longer with a very-vested interest in being on the Pubbie side of the primary.
