I'm calling it: Walker jumped the shark

[Updated, 9:45 p.m.] It may take a while for others to come around and make the call. They may have to hear more gaffes and goofs and guffaws, but it's time to declare Scott Walker unworthy of further consideration as a serious presidential hopeful.

Why today for the declaration, you ask? And isn't this just restating the obvious?

On the one hand, yes - - I've been writing about Walker The Flawed for years, and have condensed his disqualifying low-lights in several summary posts - - one here - - but there is a fresh story today that takes Walker The Preposterous to a new height, or depth, and to further mix the metaphors, expands the tip of the tipping point past the point of no return.

Today we learn that Walker believes that by supporting equal pay for women,  Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "pit one group of Americans versus other" for political gain.

And that by supporting pay equality, Clinton and Obama have redefined women to fit into one of Walker's more mean-spirited and anti-government talking points, becoming:

...people[who are] dependent on the government...whether it's Medicaid or food stamps or health care or other things out there.”

What part of 'two-income family/middle-class struggle' does he not understand, he with the $144,000 annual salary with top-shelf benefits - - including a state mansion, drivers and airplanes - - provided by a public with the farthest fall in middle-class wages, yet forced to tolerate his half-time presence in Wisconsin while out campaigning for the Presidency?

Set aside the implication that equal pay can be distorted into Walker's red-meat characterizations about welfare or one of those "things" he routinely includes in his dog whistling to the far-right. 

Set aside his obvious and proven contempt for women - - freshly indicated in his 'please-Iowans-abortion-ban-after-20-weeks without exceptions even for rape and incest - -  and his continual dismissal of women's rights to health care, and to equal protection and other basic American values and guarantees in Wisconsin and federal law, and in both the US and Wisconsin Constitution.

Set aside also the clearly craven opportunism in his cynical, pre-election appeal to male voters who might believe with his validation that their own job status or advancement has been blocked by that woman in the adjoining cube, or a training program, or a degree path who has dared on her own terms to leave the house against the traditional and measurable restrictions placed in her way by the Walkers of the world who are desperately trying to freeze American culture in the early 1950.

And look also at the mind-bending hypocrisy in Walker's accusation that Clinton and Obama's goal is to "pit one group of Americans versus another."

"Audacity," Walker calls it.

This is a good point at which to note that Eleanor Roosevelt, one of American's most famous champions of equal rights had interchangeably used the phrase "pit...against" with "divide-and-conquer" when noting how un-American it was:

"Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here."

Walker has a long and documented history of doing just that; pursuing and implementing divide-and-conquer programs and politics that pit groups against each other. 

I reprised a bit of that here the other day.

For goodness sakes, Walker is on video and audio uttering the phrase "divide-and-conquer" when whispering and scheming with Diane Hendricks, the Beloit, Wisconsin business magnate who, at the time, was his largest donor, to break unions in Wisconsin by first crushing public employees - - and his pledge to Hendricks was made before he dropped his self-described Act 10 "bomb."

And long before later completing the plan by damaging with separate legislation the private sector workers whom Hendricks wanted devalued.

Which Walker did a few weeks ago with the 'right-to-work' bill he signed after having put on that moderate's mask he does when needed by saying he had no interest in that bill.

Walker also attacked Hillary Clinton for setting up a private email system while in the public's employ - - though Walker had done the same thing, and more, when he was Milwaukee County Executive, and for which six of his staffers, associates or donors were subsequently charged in court with crimes, and convicted.

Now that's audacious - - both on its own and for point a finger at Hillary Clinton while his own record has him in the thick of the same thing.

You wonder what alternative universe Walker inhabits. It's one apparently where there is no Internet, no Google, no equivalence, no institutional or historical memory, no record of his remarks and beliefs and actions to vet and check and distribute, no accountability for his inconsistencies, contradictions, incompetencies and hypocrisies.

Anyone seeking power in a democracy who will twist the inarguable fair concept of equal pay for equal work into a self-serving divide-and-conquer construct of opposition should never be given one iota of executive power.

I've been tracking media where reporters and columnists are catching on to Walker's basic backwardness, slipperiness, phoniness and incompetency.

Add this spot-on Washington Post column today on Walker's weak, embarrassing mush about the confederate flag, and other matters, that are executive leadership disqualifies:

Walker acknowledged Saturday night that the shooting was committed by “a racist and evil man” but withheld an opinion on the Confederate flag. After Haley’s statement on Monday, Walker tweeted that he supported her decision. His aides insisted that he had arrived at his position days earlier but declined to weigh in because he did not want to distract from the period of mourning.

Walker’s whole schtick was supposed to be that he’s a no-nonsense, reform-minded executive who represents a new generation of leaders in the GOP — just the Republican with the profile to show that Hillary Clinton is a politician of the past. 

Yet here he is calling for a Constitutional amendment that would allow states to ban same-sex marriage if the Supreme Court declares that gays and lesbians have a Constitutional right to marry, and now his campaign is making weak-sounding excuses for playing catch-up on the Confederate flag. Does anyone else think this kind of stuff cuts against his main political selling points?

Like I said: Walker's jumped the shark. 

I rest my case.