Decoding Scott Walker's 7 P.M. State of The State Selfie

Updated from Monday, 9:59 p.m posting "Walker's State Of State Speech Can Be Campaigns' Ad, Too."

Gov. Walker's State of the State speech Wednesday night offers higher-than-normal political opportunity because this is a Wisconsin gubernatorial election year.

And Walker can use the speech to road-test themes and showcase talking points for a possible 2016 presidential candidacy, too.

So he gets a two-fer; expect to be spun for double your fun as he tells you:

*  Though Wisconsin lags the national recovery (well, he won't actually say that), he'll take credit for  creating jobs...

*  Except that he's all-but-mathematically eliminated from, or even getting close to keeping his 2010 campaign's signature promise - -  the creation of 250,000 new jobs - - so Walker will default to his ritual shot at long-retired former Governor Jim Doyle while misdirecting your attention to a different subject - - a declining unemployment rate.

*  Without mentioning that the decline is a reflection of a statistically-shrunken worker pool because people out of work long-term have quit looking and no longer show up in the count - - the very people whose character Walker will claim to be spiffing up by ending their mooching dependency on health insurance, food stamps, unemployment benefits or a living wage.

* More highway spending is happening, though driving is declining, road maintenance is suffering and transit is starving, but the road-builders must be served - - so funds will be skimmed from social programs (see moochers, dependency, above).

*  And he'll talk about his his tax cuts - - puny per capita - -though you may have a hard time actually hearing about this Holiest Republican Grail over the choreographed cheers from assembled GOP legislators, staffers, VIP's and other hand-picked guests in the galleries.

Should he say that some of the surplus state revenue that serendipitously showed up just in time for election-year redistribution can go to education, I do not expect him to remind you that he included a huge cut in public education funding in his first budget - - a cut that has yet to be fully restored while state aids are heading to expanded private choice and charter schools.

File under 'When-an-entitlement-is-not-an-entitlement.' And mooching isn't charged even if millions just disappear.

Also listen for the buzzwords that Walker repeats robotically, and with which he will stay on message through November, and perhaps beyond, though there is nothing of substance behind them except focus-group testing and PR consultant word-smithing:

*  Wisconsin taxpayers aren't just taxpayers, they're always "hard-working taxpayers." (A subtle dig at those moochers, above).

*  Expect to hear "tools" a lot. Comments will be open, below, for clean double-entredres.

*  Reforms, in his self-aggrandizing, self-centered but oblivious way, have always been "bold." Yes, it's been a slog, even though the Legislature and the State Supreme Court are run by and for his party and its corporate donors.

*  And Walker, humility-free, will probably tell you of his "courage" since The Day He Dropped The Bomb.

Such plaudits would be better coming from others, but Walker is Walker, so these phrases, with cheers in the background, will be delivered ready for cutting and pasting right into TV ad copy and promotional footage for Fox & Friends, fund-raisers and primary planners.

Such is the state of our state.