With his national polling numbers dipping to near zero, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker returned to Iowa on Sunday, hoping to reinvigorate his campaign in the nation’s first caucus state. On Sunday afternoon, Scott Walker drew a crowd of about 40 people at an Iowa coffee shop. The light turnout for Walker contrasted sharply with Bernie Sanders’ 3,000 person rally in New Hampshire that same evening.
Walker plans to spend much of his time over the next several months traveling across Iowa. The Wisconsin Governor concedes that his campaign is in shambles throughout the country, and that Iowa remains his best hope of crawling back into the race. While his national numbers are below one percent, Walker is still polling three percent in Iowa. Three percent support is not much to brag about, but three is a number greater than zero, and for Walker right now staying above zero is as good as it gets.
Voters have perhaps long since forgotten that just two months ago, Governor Walker was leading the GOP polls in Iowa. A July 20th Monmouth Poll had Walker comfortably in front at 22 percent, With Donald Trump a distant second place at 13 percent support. Since then, Walker’s support has dropped precipitously, and his events in the Hawkeye state have been sparsely attended.
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Speaking before a small crowd at a pizza restaurant in Vinton, Iowa, Walker delivered the same kind of hackneyed speech that he has used throughout his campaign, hoping that his trite “anti-Washington shtick” might strike a chord this time around. Taking implicit jabs at his GOP rivals, Walker stated:
You wouldn’t hire me to build condos for you in New York City, or to be a neurosurgeon, or to run HP, because that’s not where my skill sets are. But if you want someone who has got a proven track record of taking on the Washington-based special interests and winning, if that’s what you want—somebody who can shake things up in Washington—then I’m tested unlike anybody else in this race.
Of course, in his statement, preaching to the stale remnants of his choir, Walker simply reminded the few Iowa voters who haven’t abandoned him yet, that he, unlike the three leading GOP candidates, has spent the last two decades in political office. Its hard to imagine that reminding Republican voters that he is a career politician will boost his numbers, but Walker has run out of original ideas, so he will probably continue to repeat that message until his crowds shrink to less than a dozen.
His inability to draw a crowd was a sign that his reboot failed, and the 2016 election was over for Scott Walker.
Keith Brekhus is a progressive American who currently resides in Red Lodge, Montana. He is co-host for the Liberal Fix radio show. He holds a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri. In 2002, he ran for Congress as a Green Party candidate in the state of Missouri. In 2014, he worked as a field organizer for Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick’s successful re-election bid in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District. He can be followed on Twitter @keithbrekhus or on Facebook.
