Even if you’re lying about it, you have to at least pretend to have a vision for everyone. Yet the Republican Party’s own rhetoric sells half the country as a kind of domestic enemy. It’s a nearly impossible balancing act for a general-election candidate.
Scott Walker as a political performer is pretty uninspiring. He doesn’t have George Bush’s pretzel-mouthed Texas charm or Sarah Palin’s hockey Mom magnetism. He can’t fall back on an ethnic American dream parable like the one Marco Rubio can run on. He’s just a doughy, finger-pointing white guy of the type the Republican Party has been churning out to fill state assembly seats or run in back-bench congressional districts seemingly since the beginning of time. He’s exactly the kind of politician the modern Democratic Party is set up to beat.
This was supposed to be the election cycle that featured an inclusive new conservative vision, one that reflected the country’s changing demographics and would make the Democrats work harder for everyone’s vote. Instead, they’re churning out the same old us-against-everybody narrative, filled with the same insulting bromides about how they have a monopoly on patriotism and are apparently the only people in America paying taxes.
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