Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says he is ready to “wreak havoc on Washington” by taking on special interests with his union-busting style, even as he has plummeted to the bottom of the GOP primary pack in Iowa, a key state in the Midwesterner’s path to the presidential nomination.
Mr. Walker, who in two months has fallen from 18 percent to 3 percent in Quinnipiac University polling among Iowa voters, said Sunday the mainstream media are fixating on his stumbles instead of what regular Americans want to talk about — the economy and his plan to repeal Obamacare.
“I’m willing to take on anyone,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
He also called out President Obama’s “absence of leadership” for failing to push back against anti-police rhetoric amid racial tensions and sporadic attacks on law enforcement.
Mr. Walker said he passed a law in his state that requires independent probes when someone dies in police custody.
He has taken flak, though, for failing to take a firm stance on a spectrum of issues, a problem that analysts point to as a blunt and unapologetic Donald Trump sits atop the polls in Iowa, with 27-percent support in Quinnipiac’s most recent survey.
The first-in-nation Iowa caucuses are considered key to Mr. Walker’s hopes of building momentum in 2016.
CNN, which hosts the second GOP primary debate on Wednesday, played a clips showing Mr. Walker refusing to say whether being gay is a choice, whether birthright citizenship should end in the U.S., and, to offer a hypothetical solution to the Syrian refugee crisis, saying “there is no such thing as a hypothetical.”
On the latter issue, Mr. Walker said it is time for the Obama administration to focus on why refugees are fleeing in the first place.
“You’ve got to address the problem, and the problem is with ISIS and with Assad,” he said, referring to the Islamic State and Syrian President Bashar Assad.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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