WaPo Hate Toward Scott Walker

Forget Washington Post Fails. Let us just call the latest set of attack articles in the WaPo what they are:

WaPo Hate.

The first article could not be clearer in its condescending bitterness:

Richard Cohen: Is Scott Walker ignorant by choice?

Some of the startling remarks in the article include:

I have a question for Scott Walker. At what point did he decide to be heterosexual? At what age did he decide that he would not be homosexual or, if he had the energy, bisexual? I know for myself that I am unaware of making such a decision and did not mark it down — as I now would — in my Google Calendar or tweet it to much of America and the ships at sea.

Why are we discussing sexual behavior? This country needs leadership which will constrain government and spending, not individual personal behaviors (or perversions). Even gay activists and libertarian-leaning conservatives are getting fed up with all the gotcha questions about sex and sexuality.

Ted Cruz is right: the media are obsessed with sex. So is the government.

Cohen continues:

I ask these questions of Walker as a way to clarify his befogged mind. The man is running for president of the United States. He is governor of the state of Wisconsin. He is a husband and a father and a former Boy Scout, and yet he cannot say — or he will not say — whether he thinks being gay is a choice.

 

President Bush also punted on the issue during the 2004 Presidential debates. I would submit that homosexual conduct is not a choice, in the sense that people wake up one day and decided to have same-sex relationships. Yet the argument that people are born gay has no scientific basis either.

 

A better question: with the economy still stagnating and with so many willing people forgoing or forgetting about marriage, when is the leadership in Washington going to scale back the huge state apparatus barraging its way into our daily lives?

 

And when will the federal government defund Planned Parenthood, an odious, immoral, and unpopular waste of taxpayer dollars?

 

“I don’t have an opinion on every single issue out there,” the Republican candidate told CNN while campaigning recently in Iowa for the nation’s loftiest office. “I mean, to me, that’s I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that question.” I see.

To Cohen's credit, he does not pile onto the "Not one of us" elitist rag regarding Walker's lack of a college degree:

Much has also been made of Walker’s lack of a college degree. He dropped out of Marquette University, and, to some people, that means he is not intellectually qualified to be president. Others, though, like the common touch in all of that and insist, rightly in my view, that not having a college degree is not in itself proof of dullness. It would, however, make him a rarity among American presidents and, just for the record, the astoundingly inarticulate George W. Bush graduated from Yale, a very fine school, and led his nation into a war from which it is not yet fully extracted. Boola Boola!

Articulation and rhetorical influence require more than a college degree. Education is more than what one draws out of a classroom. Like many Facebook uses, Walker learned more from the School of Hard Knocks than Fort Knox.

Next.

Then there is this attack article:

Paul Waldman: Walker shows why he’ll never be president

So confident is he? Well. Why won't Walker become the next President, in Waldman's view?

Scott Walker wants to drug test food stamp recipients. That shows why he’ll never be president.

This reform is highly popular, actually. Men and women who work for a living are tired of subsidizing those who do not work, and instead use the time and money to get high. These reforms have passed in a number of states. Time limits and resources for welfare-to-work are a necessity, too.

What is Waldman's deeper frustration with Walker and welfare reform, anyway?

Sixteen years ago, George W. Bush presented to America his vision of “compassionate conservatism,” and in response he received an absolute torrent of glowing articles in the media calling him a “different kind of Republican” — conservative, to be sure, but not so mean about it.
Well those days are long past. In the 2016 GOP primaries, it’s compassionless conservatism that’s in fashion.

Government cannot be compassionate, since the state relies on force to accomplish its ends. Compassion requires voluntary submission and investment. Individuals can be compassionate, and so can private charities and churches. The government should not be in the business of compassionate anything.

Walker has already distanced himself from the Big Government Republicanism if the WaPo writer chooses to fault him as "not compassionate". Conservatism is not mean, anyway, since removing the state from influencing and imposing its agenda shows diligence and respect for the common man.

The WaPo hate continues, with compassion:

Or at least that’s what Scott Walker seems to think, because among other things, he is hell-bent on making sure that anyone who gets food stamps in Wisconsin has to endure the humiliation of submitting to a drug test. First the Wisconsin legislature sent him a bill providing that the state could test food stamp recipients if it had a reasonable suspicion they were on drugs; he used his line-item veto to strike the words “reasonable suspicion,” so the state could test any (or all) recipients it wanted. And now, because federal law doesn’t actually allow drug testing for food stamp recipients, Walker is suing the federal government on the grounds that food stamps are “welfare,” and welfare recipients can be tested.

This report shows that Walker is compassionate. . to taxpayers. He is actually being compassionate toward the welfare recipients, too. There is no worse life than bankrupted dependence, living from one fix and high to the next. Walker should be commended for blocking out "reasonable suspicion". Any reason is acceptable for drug-testing welfare users. The WaPo writer claims that "submitting to a drug test" is humiliating. Being dependent on state subsidy should be humiliating, and any step that local and state governments can take to root people out of dependence is a good thing.

We need to reinstate a worthy recognition of a work ethic in this country.

Waldman tried to justify his Walker hate with references to "context":

First, some context. The drug testing programs for welfare recipients are usually justified by saying they’ll save money by rooting out all the junkies on the dole, but in practice they’ve been almost comically ineffective. In state after state, testing programs have found that welfare recipients use drugs at lower rates than the general population, finding only a tiny number of welfare recipients who test positive.

Here is the bigger problem: why are so many people on welfare to begin with? Even as the economy has improved, however so slightly, more people are taking on food stamps. What gives? The entitlement mentality is spreading fast in this country. How much longer do people think that the free ride is going to last?

The last set of comments deserve a severe rebuke especially:

What does this have to do with Walker’s chances of winning a general election? What George W. Bush understood is that the Republican Party is generally considered to be somewhat, well, mean. It’s not welcoming, and it spends a lot of energy looking for people on whom it can pour its contempt. You can argue that this is an inaccurate representation of the party’s true nature, but it is nevertheless what many, if not most, voters believe.

That is not true, and with the Big interest groups having gotten bigger in Washington including the socially regressive homosexual lobby along with Big Business and Big Labor, the real nasty element in Washington politics belongs to the Democratic Party. There is nothing more cruel and mean than forcing people to pay higher taxes and fees for fewer services, and to frustrate commerce and economic growth in the pursuit of vain social justice goals.

And keeping people dependent, giving them a hand-out from the state instead of giving them a hand up.

The last WaPo blast is particularly disappointing, coming from the token Republican commentator:

Jennifer Rubin: Walker’s non-defense of gay bashing

Oh really? Rubin writes:

Yesterday, I took issue with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s slur of gay men when he suggested the previous Boy Scout ban on gay troop leaders was needed so children would be “protected.” On Tuesday evening, a spokeswoman for Walker’s campaign had this reaction: “The previous policy protected Scouts from the rancorous political debate over policy issues and culture wars. Scouts should not be used as a political football on issues that can often be heated and divisive.”

It is not a slur to suggest that young people should not be alone with adults abusing their bodies and not living in accordance with proper sexual practices. Would parents allow an adult male to hang out with girl scouts on a camping trip? Gay adults are making the decision to identify with their sexual feelings and behaviors. They have placed their bedroom on the front doorstep of their lives, and they have to absorb the consequences.

The Boy Scouts was founded as a Christian organization. How can this group open up its membership to ideas and conduct which have nothing to do with Biblical revelation or scientific reality?

Walker is right, though, and boys should not be exploited politically. Children should not be exploited at all, and yet the Democratic Party and homosexual activists are abusing children every time they use them and their affiliation in private groups to further an agenda. Not just regarding sexual behavior, but also when these same groups bow to pressure from Big Green as well. How many children have been bombarded with the lie that the earth is going to disappear in the next five years under a polar icecap flood? Kids have been lied in to believing that every tree will be cut down if businesses and communities expand, or that over-population will wipe out the planet, too.

Perverse Big Government agendas have infiltrated a number of these otherwise wholesome community groups, and Walker was right to say the Boy Scouts should not be "used as a political football".

One more comment on Rubin's comments:

The first rule of social media is that you ultimately have to be held accountable for everything you say as a candidate. There is always someone listening and whatever is said is preserved — forever. You cannot show one face to one set of voters and another to different voters.

It is true that candidates cannot say one thing to one audience then turn around and say something else to other people. The other side of this argument, however, has to bring in the truth that the media has spent most of time throwing softballs to Democratic contenders while throwing stink bombs at Republican candidates.  I wonder when the press will start asking Bernie Sanders about his strong pro-gun record, or Martin O'Malley about all the black people he just locked up repeatedly in Baltimore during his mayoral tenure, followed by his non-action to help impoverished communities during his governorship.

Final Reflection

Big Media is looking for any easy opportunity to catch Republican candidates making foolish or wrong-headed comments. The same assiduousness should be directed at Democratic candidates, the same ones who either want to advance the Obama agenda for another four to eight years. Walker has been a major target because he has pushed back against one of the biggest, most violent special interest: the public sector unions. He defeated them in one major clash in 2011, then beat them a second time when he overcame the recall in 2012 and again in 2014 when he won reelection in his own right.


The Washington Post brings a view point which deserves to be vetted with the same unending scrutiny with which it assaults Republican candidates, including Scott Walker.