Free Republic

The Walker surge in Iowa, Hillary’s Obama problem and other news from Week One of our yearlong insiders’ survey from the ground in 2016’s first-in-the-nation races.Most Iowa insiders believe Scott Walker would win their state’s Republican caucuses if they were held this week. But they’re not this week, and virtually none of the most influential thought leaders in the Hawkeye State believe that the Wisconsin governor will sustain his recent bounce in polls. This is one of several intriguing findings in the debut survey of The POLITICO Caucus. More than 100 of the most plugged-in activists, operatives and elected officials...

Public Policy Polling's most recent Wisconsin poll — released on March 10 — shows Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker with increased enthusiasm among Republicans in the state for his White House bid. But Walker trails well behind Hillary Clinton in a potential general election contest for the presidency. PPP's poll of Wisconsin voters found 35 percent in the state want Walker to run for president, compared to 58 percent who don't think he should run. The poll also shows that Walker's approval numbers have dipped over the past few months. Before the midterm election in November 2014, his approval spread was...

Governor Scott Walker has taken Iowa Republicans by storm. In the span of just a couple months, Walker has gone from a potential candidate who everyone seemed to like, to the frontrunner for the 2016 Republican caucuses. By every indicator available – buzz, staff hires, endorsement, or poll numbers – Walker is the lead horse in the Iowa caucus race. Walker’s campaign in Iowa is moving so fast that it will make your head spin. But that’s not all that is moving at a fast pace for Walker. Some of his long held positions seem to be on the move...

A question I often am asked is: "Who would you bet on to win the presidency?" Personally, I don't bet on politics, but here's my current take on the 2016 presidential race—with, of course, the caveat that we don't know which campaigns will turn out the best in terms of organization, strategy, tactics, or execution, much less which candidates will step on land mines along the way. The Democratic nomination appears fairly straightforward. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now the prohibitive favorite. If her early stumbles during her book tour, or remarks like the one she made about...

DES MOINES — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz risked the ire of Iowa farmers by staking out free-market positions on two federal policies favored by agribusiness at a summit Saturday. The two likely Republican presidential candidates opposed an ethanol requirement favored by corn farmers as well as a wind tax credit in a state where more than a quarter of electricity is generated by wind. They were speaking at the Iowa Ag Summit, which was organized by the state’s largest Republican donor, Bruce Rastetter, at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines. Most of the...

Walker was the second-most-conservative GOP governor running for re-election in 2014.2 According to an ideological scoring system created by Adam Bonica, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, Walker is more than one standard deviation more conservative than the average Republican governor who ran in 2014. That’s impressive, given that there is some relationship (although a weak one for Republican governors) between the 2012 presidential vote and the ideology of incumbent governors running for re-election in 2014.

---snip---Ready to Defend Hillary: As the Hillary Clinton email controversy exploded, Capitol Hill Democrats were caught flat-footed, and either begged off or feigned ignorance when reporters asked about it. Now that more of a narrative has developed, top Dems are defending her, even if they don’t know exactly why the whole thing blew up in the first place – or why Clinton decided to go outside the government to set up her own email system. But no one thinks the scandal will disrupt Clinton’s inevitable, unstoppable, so-far uncontested march toward deciding if she wants to be the Democrats’ 2016 presidential...

Scott Walker has been at the top of the polls in recent weeks but has he peaked too early? His rivals hope so. The early campaign has been kind to Scott Walker. He tops the competition in Iowa and New Hampshire, and is a close second in South Carolina. He gets high marks among social conservatives, among the moderate establishment, from Tea Party types. The Washington Post recently called him the first “It” candidate of 2016. Which, his rivals to the nomination say, is exactly where they want him. The Daily Beast spoke with strategists working with each of Walker’s...

Does it matter if Obama is a Christian or not? No, but it matters how Republicans answer stupid questions like that.Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been surging in recent weeks, and there is a sense he could be the guy to bridge the gap between the Republican establishment and the grassroots conservative base. But campaigns are crucibles, and if the last couple of days are a harbinger of things to come, heÂ’s in trouble. Could it be that the governor who fought so courageously against Wisconsin unions might not be ready for prime time on the national stage? No, IÂ’m...

The rapid rise of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as a top-tier contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 is one of the more surprising stories of the opening months of this year. Whether he was prepared for this sudden emergence is an open question.

There are plenty of things to criticize Scott Walker over. His lack of a college degree is not one of them. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has emerged as a modest front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination in the past couple of weeks. This may well be a temporary state of affairs. If the 2012 GOP primaries taught us anything about the presidential nominating process in the super PAC era, it’s that every candidate will be the front-runner for a few weeks. At some point this year, everyone from Huckles to Doctor-Citizen Ben Carson will serve a brief spell as the...

The Hill reports: “Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will be among the possible 2016 Republican presidential candidates speaking to a prominent group of conservatives in Iowa this spring. Walker and Cruz will speak at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s spring kickoff event on April 25, the group announced in a Monday statement.” Ironically, in an election cycle in which many pundits discount the influence of Christian conservatives, they could play a critical role in selection of the nominee. In past cycles, these values voters have split their vote, never managing to unite behind a single,...

Andrew Johnson of NRO reports that in 2002, as executive of Milwaukee County, Scott Walker signed a resolution that expressed support for “comprehensive immigration reform” that will “provide greater opportunity for undocumented working immigrants to obtain legal residency.” The author of the resolution says that Walker definitely supported it. Having signed it, he should be presumed to have supported, in any case. Will this news harm Walker’s chances of becoming the GOP presidential nominee? Standing alone, it shouldn’t. It’s one thing to sign a non-bonding resolution passed by the legislature in favor of “greater opportunity” for legal residency. It’s quite...

A neat scoop by Andrew Johnson, although I’m more interested in grassroots reaction to it than I am in the story itself. “Governor Walker does not support amnesty,” the governor’s spokesman, Tom Evenson, tells National Review Online. Evenson says the 2002 resolution was “stripped of references to amnesty before passage” and, in fact, reinforces the governor’s view that illegal immigrants should face penalties before they are granted citizenship. The resolution, viewable here, did not mention or spell out such penalties, and expressed support for “comprehensive immigration reform” that would have provided “greater opportunity for undocumented working immigrants to obtain legal...

Mitt Romney announced on Jan. 30 that he would not run for President in 2016, and immediately the commentariate ordained Jeb Bush the big winner. Bush was Romney’s heir, a thousand wagging tongues proclaimed. The donors would fall to him, and with them would go the Republican establishment, then the voters. The Republicans had a “frontrunner.” If there is a 2016 frontrunner for the GOP, he achieved that status six days before Romney’s announcement. On that day, Sat., Jan. 24, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker delivered a speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines, It vaulted him into the...

Des Moines, Iowa – Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is opening the first Iowa office among the potential 2016 Republican contenders for the presidency. Walker, who has led all other GOP presidential aspirants in recent polls, leased the space at 2775 86th St. in Urbandale, the Des Moines Register reports. The office building has a lengthy political history with Republican candidates – although Walker hasn’t officially tossed his hat in the ring for the 2016 election. Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses are tentatively expected to be held on Feb. 1, 2016 and are crucially important for presidential campaigns looking to establish a national...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) In the span of just two weeks, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has catapulted into Republican superstar status. Mitt Romney's premature withdrawal from the 2016 presidential race cracked open the doors for the emergence of a hardline right-wing alternative to the Party establishment's lone remaining consensus candidate, Jeb Bush. And with his surprisingly animated speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit, Walker smashed those doors down and jumped to the front of the pack in Iowa and New Hampshire. With his rhetorical guns blazing at every enemy of Wall Street Republicans and Tea Party conservatives alike, Scott Walker has emerged straight...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who is seen as a possible 2016 presidential candidate, will keynote a training session for Republican organizers in New Hampshire in March. He will speak the at the New Hampshire Republican State Committee’s grassroots organizing training session and rally in March. In a statement, he said he was excited about speaking about his conservative record as governor. Walker became a star in the GOP by battling public-sector unions in Wisconsin. His policies brought criticism and an unsuccessful recall attempt in 2012. He was reelected in 2014.

Based on historical patterns, the next president is likely to be a GenXer. This is not good news for the many baby boomers running, or thinking about running, in 2016. When voters decide it is time to move the presidency on to the next generation, they keep electing presidents in that next generation, or they go on to the one that follows. They do not go back. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were from the baby boomer generation. Barack Obama is from the Gen X generation (those born 1961 to 1981). If the pattern holds, the next president will...

Scott Walker inherited quite a mess from the previous governor Jim Doyle, a Democrat. When he took office in 2011, Wisconsin faced a projected $3.6 billion deficit, over $800 million in unpaid bills, and the loss of nearly 134,000 jobs over the previous four years. During his campaign, he had promised to set the state on a path toward government reform and fiscal order.