Well, the Republican primary herd is being culled. First, former Governor Rick Perry bailed, and then yesterday word came that Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker was taking his walking papers and headed out stage left. (“You’re something else! You ought to be on the stage.” “Really?” “Absolutely. There’s one leaving in about 10 minutes!”)
It’s got to feel lousy to be a governor, run for president, get told you’re a front-runner, get backed by the billionaire Koch brothers and then discover you don’t have even 1 percent of the people in your own party backing you. That’s got to sting.
But Walker, who will get to continue to gut the state university system, shred what’s left of the state’s social services, and work to eliminate the last union jobs in Wisconsin, doesn’t want to leave alone. He’s encouraging others to drop out of the race as well–though he didn’t specify anyone as of this morning. In a Huffington Post story that quoted Walker’s campaign suspension announcement, he said: “I encourage other candidates to do the same [leave the race] so that the voters can focus on a limited number of candidates who can offer a positive, conservative alternative to the current front-runner,” meaning Donald Trump.
Of course, since Walker only “indefinitely suspended” his campaign, it’s not impossible to imagine that if Trump can be eliminated, he’d be willing to step into the void and reenter the race as that “conservative alternative.”
