I think a stronger word is more applicable but I didn’t want to be so gauche.
It’s no secret that people are aware of my affinity for Scott Walker. What he’s been able to do in the blue state of Wisconsin has been remarkable and his ability to fend off the silliest of Democratic attacks has been admirable.
That said, he has stumbled a bit out of the gate which is to be expected. We live in a world of news that is updated by the second. Something happens in the world and we know about it right away. As such, candidate missteps are going to face far more scrutiny than they ever have before. That’s just how the game is played these days.
However, it also means that such missteps will barely be remembered within weeks, sometimes days. The news cycle moves so fast, so many things simply do no matter after some time.
Anybody remember how badly Steve Scalise’s issue with supposedly speaking to a group associated with David Duke? Do you remember the hand-wringing over that from certain quarter of the GOP and within the conservative movement? Remember how bad it was going to be if Boehner did not cut him loose?
Yeah, me neither.
I am going to loudly brag that I was somebody that was saying it wouldn’t matter after some time and I was right. Scalise has settled into his role and that issue has become a non-issue. Liberals tried to make it rise from the ashes when some in GOP leadership did not attend the 50th anniversary of the Selma march, but fizzled out, really fast.
This is the reason I find Scott Walker’s decision to oust his newly hired digital outreach consultant, Liz Mair. Liz was the target of some snipes from the gutter of the site that trades on Andrew Breitbart’s legacy, but her real “problem” came from some yokels in the Iowa GOP who didn’t care for some things she tweeted back in January when the party decided not to replace the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary as the first two battlegrounds in the primary season.
One tweet:
In other news, I see Iowa is once again embarrassing itself, and the GOP, this morning. Thanks, guys.
— Liz Mair (@LizMair) January 24, 2015
And another:
The sooner we remove Iowa's frontrunning status, the better off American politics and policy will be.
— Liz Mair (@LizMair) January 24, 2015
I don’t know Liz personally, though I have interacted with her on Twitter. She’s friendly and affable but also suffers at times from the same thing almost all DC based consultants suffer from which is hubris as it relates to politics. “I work in this business so I know better than you, fleeb.” Certainly, there is “inside baseball” stuff that goes on behind the scenes that a lot of us don’t know about but it doesn’t mean the consultants are always right. But this is a minor quibble common in DC. Lack of hubris will probably have you constantly looking for work.
Still, Walker’s team cutting her loose was just pathetic and it makes him look weak. He takes on unions in his state and gets death threats from union activists and yet he cowers before a bunch of whiny Iowa GOP activists? Look at this tweet from one of the aggrieved:
Why candidates who need to win the Iowa caucuses hire people who hate the caucuses is beyond me. http://t.co/0lDKFvqJKQ
— Craig Robinson (@IowaGOPer) March 16, 2015
Yes because President Santorum and President Huckabee can tell you all about “needing to win” the Iowa caucuses.
This was a big nothing burger and Mair’s comments about Iowa would have faded into obscurity over time. People will argue this was a business decision. That people should not take it personally. That is true.
It was just a bad business decision.