Items From My Mailbox: Why The Walker Campaign Flopped

Thank you, Tea Party Patriots;

• The collapse of Scott Walker’s campaign.
  On Monday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker dropped out of the presidential race. It wasn’t that long ago that Walker was considered one of the most formidable GOP candidates for the nomination. Back in February, in fact, he topped all of the Iowa polls. A governor who had survived a recall election, won three elections in four years (in a Blue State, no less!) and had defeated the public employee unions in his state, he seemed poised to be a major contender.
  
  But he made several fundamental errors:
  
  First, he never made the transition from governor to candidate for President. There’s a whole different issue set between state-level officials and national-level officials, and Walker never finished boning up on the new issue set he would have to address as a presidential contender. That led to an unfortunate series of seeming flip-flops, which never seemed to end.
  
  Second, he built a big national campaign staff (more than 90 people on payroll, including a full-time campaign photographer!) before he had the financial infrastructure in place to support it.
  
  Third, he waited until July to formally announce his campaign – which meant he waited until July to start raising the money needed to support a large national campaign infrastructure. By that point, he was already fading in the polls.
  
  After a slow summer that saw the unexpected rise of Donald Trump, Walker’s poll numbers began to sag, and donors grew increasingly concerned that he would not regain momentum. The two GOP debates didn’t help. The reviews of his performance in both debates were brutal – with many people noting that Walker seemed to be the “invisible” candidate, and that he faded into the background … hardly helpful for a campaign desperate to make an impression.
  
  Last week’s debate in Simi Valley, CA was the final straw. Walker spoke for fewer minutes than any other candidate, and major donors reportedly were disappointed in the weak performance.
  
  Politico reports that Walkers’s wife, Tonette Walker, convened an emergency meeting at the Governor’s mansion on Monday morning to discuss the sluggish campaign’s poll numbers and fundraising. Shortly after the meeting concluded, Walker made the decision to drop out.  By that evening, Walker had made the official announcement that he was suspending his campaign.