Leftwinger Josh Marshall : Yes, Prez Candidate Walker is the Real Deal

Josh Marshall at TPM:

There's talk today of a poll boomlet for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. And he's clearly demonstrating that he's serious about running for President.

It's probably a given that I'm not a huge fan of Scott Walker's. And I do not think he'd be a terribly strong general election candidate. But I do think, as I mentioned a few months ago, that he's much stronger than is generally understood and a more viable candidate than most of the other potential candidates who get vastly more coverage and speculation.

Let's start with the essential fact: Walker has stood for and won elections for Governor of Wisconsin three times in four years. For technical, term-length reasons, that is extremely uncommon. But it's pretty uncommon just in general terms. These were each races that were heavily, heavily contested, from inside and outside the state. And perhaps most significantly, Walker won these races after pushing through major, structural conservative policy changes. It's one thing for a Republican to win in a blue or purple state, push through a tax cut and get reelected. That's not what happened. Walker delivered on big big policy changes. To me, they were terrible policy changes. But they were big. And he did that and won three times in four years on what is at best a purple state - a lot of good arguments it's blue.

With a Wisconsin voting public that has an awful lot of Republican state legislators: Wisconsin isn't pure Blue. No word on how Josh Marshall feels about Wisconsin's public pension system compared to New York's?