When Mitt made it sort of official that he wasn’t going to run there was a mad dash to see which cat we could hang the bell on next. (I say “sort of” in this context because, let’s face it… a statement like it is “unlikely” that he’ll change his mind doesn’t exactly have the ring of hardened steel, particularly compared to the no, no, no, no, no, no Ann once gave. And even that one fell apart. Hillary won’t make it official for months, so Romney’s not under as much clock pressure as people seem to think.) Noah put a lot of thought into an analysis which concluded that there was too much poison in the well between Jeb and Mitt for there to be any sort of rapprochement, so Chris Christie was the obvious option for the Mitt money men.

At first blush this isn’t a bad bet to make. Christie may have a new video of him falling out of a chair to contend with, but that’s not a disqualifier. The New Jersey Governor was scheduled to meet with Romney already and his early PAC fundraising is reportedly going well. By yesterday afternoon, Christie’s team was already forwarding calls to the governor from formerly Mitt aligned donors, something they were quick to tout to the press. But while Noah makes some good points, bad blood between Jeb and Mitt doesn’t always devolve into an equally toxic relationship between their respective donors. I do agree, though, that Christie could be seen as having had a pretty good day.

But what was less covered by the media yesterday – at least in my opinion – was the person who may wind up profiting the most from the Mitt retreat: Scott Walker. Walker has a strange, dual appeal to the primary voters which is hard to put in a pigeonhole. On the one hand, at least for donors, the Wisconsin Governor has the pedigree of an establishment candidate. He’s a battle tested executive at the state level with several wins in a purple state under his belt. At the same time, he maintains that disdain for the establishment that allows him to come to Washington for the sole purpose of bashing Washington.

Walker, who is deep into preparations for an all-but-certain bid for the Oval Office, called for a “transfer of power” from Washington, D.C. to the states. He called the city “68 square miles surrounded by reality,” with six of the 10 richest counties in America, according to the median income. “We need to transfer power, power from our nation’s capital here in Washington back to the cities and states in this country, where the people, where the hardworking people in this country can actually hold their government accountable,” he said.

His 527 – Our American Revival – may not be sweeping up all the cash as the race takes shape, but he’s attracting a nice balance of both big bundlers and large numbers of small, individual donors. He doesn’t have a “scary” reputation with the middle, but he somehow seems to attract very substantial support from the more Tea Party aligned crowd. Even in our own early surveys here – among a large group of vocal conservatives who tend to see the Romney / Bush / Christie triumvirate as interesting only in terms of spitting on them enough to drown them – Walker manages to best even Ted Cruz. Some of us were rather taken aback by his repeat wins because Cruz seems to be the strongest contender by far among those who spent 2012 bouncing back and forth between the Anybody But Mitt candidates like Bachmann, Cain and Santorum.

The fact that Walker can best Cruz here says a lot about his cross tribal appeal. With Mitt out of the way and Christie still looking like he’s in a battle royal with Bush for the Romney cash, I’m waiting to see if Walker begins drifting upward in the national numbers. The big bonus for conservatives in a potential Walker presidency would be his appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. The public worker unions would probably crumble into dust like zombies overnight just at the thought of that.