"The Unelectable Whiteness of Scott Walker"

The Unelectable Whiteness of Scott Walker

By Alec MacGillis at the New Republic

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118145/scott-walkers-toxic-racial-politics?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=TNR%20Daily%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=TNR%20Daily%20Zephyr%20with%20LiveIntent%20-%20June%2016%2C%202014

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Throughout the protests, Walker remained almost eerily unperturbed—even after he received death threats that resulted in round-the-clock security at his home. “It’s always been difficult for me to understand—if you’re an ideologue, you have passion, and he’s almost the most passionless human I’ve ever encountered,” says Milwaukee County Supervisor Gerry Broderick, a Democrat. “He never reacts with anything other than a shrug or a smile.” Walker’s only overt enthusiasms appear to be his Harley Davidson motorcycle and Ronald Reagan. He and Tonette married on Reagan’s birthday, and every year they celebrate their wedding anniversary / Reagan’s birthday by serving the Gipper’s favorite dishes, such as macaroni-and-cheese casserole and red, white, and blue jelly beans. Walker’s mother attributes his even keel to his faith. “He prayed and read the Bible every day, and when things got rough, [supporters would] tell him they were praying for him,” she says.

But there was another explanation for Walker’s calm. In the WOW counties, his support was near-absolute; on talk radio, his views were echoed and amplified without question on a daily basis. A network of powerful conservative supporters, from the Koch brothers to Wisconsin’s own Bradley Foundation, had rallied to his side. Ensconced in this bubble of affirmation and adulation, Walker believed that he could crush collective bargaining without provoking a backlash.

On the rare occasions that the bubble was punctured, the results could be humiliating. Eight weeks into Walker’s term, a prankster called him pretending to be David Koch. Walker didn’t realize he was speaking to an impostor and chatted chummily with him for nearly 20 minutes about his strategy for dealing with the protests; he hung up without figuring out the ruse. He was mocked around the country for his gullibility, but what the call really revealed was the insularity of his worldview. Only in an environment where Walker was praised so unrelentingly (around the same time, a TV-station manager who was miking him up whispered that she and her children had got down on their knees to pray for him) could the call have ever seemed plausible. The prankster, Ian Murphy, showered Walker with the same gushing reinforcement he had received from Sykes and Belling for years. “You’re not talking to any of these Democrat bastards are you?” he said. “Beautiful, beautiful. Got to crush that union.” Walker responded just as he had on the radio shows, with aw-shucks faux-humility. “We’ve had all the national shows. We were on ‘Hannity’ last night, I did ‘Good Morning America’ and the ‘Today’ show and all that sort of stuff, was on ‘Morning Joe’ this morning. We’ve done ‘Greta,’” he said. Walker’s radar failed to go off even when Murphy urged him to plant provocateurs among the protesters to make it look like they’d turned violent. “We thought about that,” Walker responded, incredibly, before explaining that he had decided against the idea because it might backfire: “My only fear would be if there’s a ruckus caused is that would scare the public into thinking maybe the governor has to settle to avoid all these problems.”

Walker’s 2013 memoir of the protests, Unintimidated, offers other moments similarly disconnected from reality. In one scene, Walker describes having been besieged by protesters as he was leaving an appearance at a La Crosse factory in February 2011: “We watched in disbelief as the throng of people rushed toward the second exit to block our path. As we tried to pull out, they surrounded the car and began beating on the windows and rocking the vehicle. ... We were dealing with people who were so blinded by their anger that they were not in the least bit afraid to storm and shake a police car.”



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