Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Van Hollen Abandons Walker; Not A GOP Succession Plan

Remember the notion floated out by some moderate Republicans that Wisconsin's GOP Attorney General J. B. Van Hollen had announced his intention to retire to position himself to run for Governor when Scott Walker packed it in after one term to run for President?

I said the WI GOP base would never go for it.

I think you can pretty much discard that Van Hollen-after-Walker scenario after thinking through Van Hollen's move to side with state media seeking the release of documents likely to put Walker in a negative light. Or worse.

As a part of a criminal appeal, state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is seeking to make public a host of records from a secret investigation of aides to Gov. Scott Walker.
Van Hollen may run for another office some day, and, if so, surely would hope that editorial boards would remember he'd favored document release and disclosure, but I don't think that office is Wisconsin Governor as Scott Walker's replacement.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good insight

Anonymous said...

Is he seeking to make all of them public or just some? What does he know?

Gareth said...

Or, Van Hollen decided that siding with the Journal-Sentinel would be prudent, since they employ the Milwaukee area hate-talkers, while the release of the John Doe emails couldn't hurt him but might grease Walker's decision to kick-start his Presidential run in lieu of a re-election bid.

Van Hollen has the best name recognition of all the possible 2014 candidates and can demagogue with the best of them, as evidenced during his initial primary against Paul Bucher, during which he claimed to be the best prepared to fight the "War On Terrorism" in the Badger state as he had secret knowledge of terrorist training camps in northern Wisconsin. He is just shameless enough to wear the Republican crown.

And what ever happened to those terrorist camps, inquiring minds want to know?

CJ said...

Van Hollen's move leaves me suspect. Particularly in light of the fact he's still protecting Vukimir and the release of ALEC related documents to FOIA requests.

I still get a "what's wrong with this picture?" vibe.

Anonymous said...

Personally thinking Van Hollen wants to distance himself from the Vukimir fiasco and the corruption charges he might be subpoenaed for testimony on. After all, he just had to file on the Act 10 Colas rulings for stay on Walker's orders, was involved with illegal gerrymandering defense...maybe a good time for him to save his reputation (or what is left of that after the corporate $ put into his campaign )

Boxer said...

@ Gareth:

And what ever happened to those terrorist camps, inquiring minds want to know?

Dintcha know? The terrorist camps are manned and guarded by Bullet Proof Securities. And corporately sponsored by G-Tac.