Scott Walker: Hillary Clinton’s ‘Washington knows best’ approach ‘should be left in the past’

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Tuesday pitched his ability to make inroads with younger voters and blasted what he called former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s affinity for a “Washington knows best” approach that he called “tired” and said “should be left in the past.”

“I think we need to go to places Republicans don’t typically go, and we need to talk in ways that we don’t typically talk about,” Mr. Walker said at an economic summit in response to a question on how the GOP can get more people in the party’s tent. “We need to be true to our principles, true to our concepts.”

Mr. Walker, who is not yet an official 2016 presidential candidate but has been running at or near the top in early public polls on the GOP field, touted exit polling from his re-election campaign last year that showed him narrowly winning among 18- to 24-year-olds.

“That’s largely unheard of for a Republican,” he said at Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s Economic Growth Forum in Orlando. “We actually went to college campuses, we organized, and we went out to where young professionals were. We laid out the difference, which I think is not unlike the difference we might very likely see in this presidential election.”

Public polls show Mrs. Clinton as the undisputed front-runner to secure the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.

“For example, I think Hillary Clinton believes in [a] Washington-knows-best, top-down approach that says we’ll tell you what to do, when to do and how to do it,” Mr. Walker said. “I think that is tired, I think that [has] failed. I think that’s something that should be left in the past. I think the contrast to that, to young voters, as an example, is to say we believe an economy should be built from the ground up — it’s new and fresh … organic and dynamic.”

“As long as you don’t violate the health and safety of your neighbor, go do your own thing,” he said. “Live your own life, start your career, build your own business; we’re not going to be in the way. The other side wants to keep you under their thumb; we want to lift you up and every other American out there.”