Scott Walker benefits politically from outsiders' misinformation

In Wisconsin, we understand that Scott Walker's flip-flops and maneuvers in advance of the GOP convention in Cleveland are calculated by a super self-promoter to get publicity and, should lightning strike, walk off with his party's presidential nomination should it be wrested from Donald Trump.

Don't think that Walker and fellow Wisconsites Rience Preibus, the party chairman, and House Speaker Paul Ryan, the convention co-chair and senior party national elected official, aren't working overtime to throw the nomination to Walker. 

But a faraway pundit overthinks the issue, crediting Walker as a party unifier and even managing to use the words "unscathed and' "pristine" regarding Walker's record among Republicans.

Pristine? Or invisible? 

He was running low on campaign cash, sliding sharply in opinion polls, losing potential donors to rivals and unnerving supporters with a stream of gaffes, like saying he would consider building a wall along the Canadian border... 

And Mr. Walker’s message — a tale of conservative triumph over labor unions and other entrenched Democratic interests in a Midwestern swing state — plainly failed to connect. He drew support from less than one-half of 1 percent of Republican primary voters in a recent CNN national poll.

And unscathed? Take a look at this 2015 New York Times story:

Scott Walker, Set for a Bigger Stage, Faces G.O.P. Revolt in Wisconsin

And this blog posting from about the same time:

WI Assembly Republican calls Walker's submission "a crap budget"

And this takedown by Wisconsin GOP businessman, John Torinus, who blasted Walker's budget, its priorities and methods as they produced these results:

• Whack the University of Wisconsin budget by $300 million and turn its governance over to an undefined “authority?”

• Zero out the Stewardship Fund that has been supported by both parties for more than 60 years?

• Strip the Natural Resources Board of its policy-making authority after eight decades in that role?

• Cut out bonding for public buildings in favor of $1.3 billion in new highway bonds, which will be paid off by taxpayers down the road?

This is government by surprise. 

So let's not let Walker skate by, again, since much reporting last year fell for his self-promoting aw-shucks, not-Christie, 'son-of-a-preacher' Midwestern nice persona which was and is seriously at odds with his record.

Which I'd summarized recently this way, for the record:

Media and delegates on their way to Cleveland should stop in Wisconsin to get a closer look at The Walker Story - - and these Walker-inspired high lowlights  - - broken roads, and broken promises, and broken schools, and poisoned water, and corrupted government, and dishonest governance, and insider money, and jobs' fail, and jobs' bail, and environmental disregard, and raw power, and polluter power, and more polluter power, and more polluter power...