Bill Lueders of WCIJ interviewed Gov. Scott Walker.
I do encourage you to watch the full 6 1/2 minute video for yourself. Here’s my translation of what we see in it.
Same day voter registration – Not something Walker’s interested in if it has a price tag on it. “I don’t want a bill that costs that kind of money”.
Translation: I can release a report claiming that the expense of getting rid of same day voter registration is next to nothing. That would contradict the recent G.A.B. report that says it would cost $5.2 million, but if a later concocted report is broadcast with a deluge of TV and radio – will the majority of voters know the difference? That change would not come until just before the 2014 election. Source: gossip, my gut, reading what his supporters write
Right to Work Law –
Walker says he’s not interested in RTW laws. Leuders replies that Michigan governor Rick Snyder also said similar [in fact he did that for 3 years] but then he recently rushed a bill through. Walker replies that MI and WI are different – -that “The unions overstepped” by trying to amend the Michigan constitution to protect the right to collectively bargain and that Indiana is RTW and near Michigan.
But in WI’s case there’s no referendum and Minnesota and Illinois do not have RTW so there’s not a neighboring state pushing WI.
He then tells a little story about a long-time supporter of his coming up to him and saying he’s right to skip RTW right now. Then he rambles on about recalls, “uncertainty” with the economy – a rambling sentence that suggests that the political discord in Wisconsin was not of his own making – that it fell out of the sky and landed here and we don’t want any more of those “distractions”.
Translation: I would like to get elected in 2014 and if I push RTW before then I will once again be kicking a hornet’s nest and maybe this time around the unions and the Democrats will work together, pick a decent candidate, and get enough national financing to compete against right wing money. Also, it’s clear that with his 2nd term in hand, Obama’s now making stronger statements against Right to Work. Among battleground states, Obama got his biggest margin against Mitt right here in Wisconsin. I need to tread carefully.
You promised 250,000 jobs during your 2010 election. Are you going to meet your goal?
(Walker sure knows how to work storytelling to his advantage.)
Walker compares his failure to deliver jobs with his son’s occasional struggle to get on the honor roll in high school due to illness or if “he had some big issue come up”, “People say ‘that’s an excuse’ and I say ‘It may be but I still want him on the honor roll’. My goal is still 250,000.”
…”I concede it’s hard. I gotta hunker down. I gotta double down.” He concedes he may not get to the goal. He reiterates that the doesn’t want to focus on “distractions”.
Walker also dismisses a recent Politifact assessment of his job numbers [they say his pants were "on fire" for claiming to have made 100,000 jobs] and says that we won’t really have a clear idea of how many jobs were made here until the December numbers come in and we have a “true” year to year comparison that avoids skewing from seasonal fluctuations.
Translation: I am not going to take away your contraception and give each teacher a Glock between now and November 2014 because appeasing my fringe won’t win an election but maybe enough new jobs will. If I do get caught short of my jobs goal, I’ll either blame the “uncertainty” caused by the recalls (which was really caused by the my power grab in 2011) or I’ll play fast and loose with whatever the numbers are – as I did in May just before the recall election when I released numbers contradictory to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and then claimed that BLS approved the numbers when in truth, the BLS had done no such thing.
I’ll be keeping an eye out for Bill Lueder’s write-up. Certainly the interview had to go longer than 6 1/2 minutes.
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