Walker Shows Characteristic Discipline On Campaign Trail In Iowa

It was a little past 8:30 on Saturday morning, and Scott Walker was about to make his first run of the day through a stump speech he knows by heart.

The Wisconsin governor was in Council Bluffs, Iowa at a Hy-Vee grocery store in a small-ish conference room — too small for the standing-room-only crowd. People fanned themselves to stay cool as Walker began to speak.

“Well, it’s great to be here,” he told the crowd. “You know, this week we just announced something on Monday. So I get to be here in Council Bluffs for the very first time and say, ‘I’m Scott Walker, I’m running for president, and I’m asking for your vote.’”

The speech — along with others Walker would go on to give Saturday — was part of a lesson for voters in early presidential primary states, one that the people of Wisconsin are already familiar with: Walker is a tireless campaigner who rarely veers from his political message.

The address started out as a checklist for Iowa conservatives. Walker mentioned that he cut taxes, defunded Planned Parenthood, and signed a voter ID law while in Wisconsin. He name-dropped six-term Iowa Republican Gov. Terry Brandstad.

Walker also told the story of how he lived in Plainfield, Iowa as a boy and went door-to-door to raise money to buy an Iowa flag for the town hall.

“That’s the kind of people we are here in the Midwest,” he said. “We stand up for what’s right. We do the right thing. We don’t make a lot of fuss about it — we just do it. And I think that’s what we need now more than ever in Washington. You see, America is a can-do kind of country. We’ve just got a government in Washington that can’t quite seem to get the job done.”

Later, Walker spoke to his biggest crowd of the day in an auditorium at the Family Leadership Summit, a conservative Christian event in the city of Ames attended by other 2016 GOP hopefuls. The audience there was more of a wild card for Walker, since by all indications they could ask pretty much anything.

One man said he thinks judges are not upholding the Constitution.

“Why is it that these people are not brought to justice? Why are they not arrested?” he asked.

Another asserted lobbyists control politicians. “My question is this: Can we outlaw lobbyists?” he said.

Walker sat calmly in his chair, unphased. He used the question about arresting judges to talk about the kind of judges he would appoint, and used the question about lobbyists to launch into his stump speech about his fight with unions.

“When we talk about reform, one of the things we did was to take power out of the hands of the big government special interests and put it firmly in the hands of the hardworking taxpayers,” he said.

The summit was the only event of the day where Walker wore a tie. Afterward, it was back to blue jeans and a short sleeve button-down shirt.

At every stop, Walker told a story that reporters on the Walker beat know almost word-for-word by now about how he shops at Kohl’s to find bargains. It’s ostensibly a metaphor for economic policy, but it’s also a way for Walker to tell voters he’s like them.

“If I’m going to go to Kohl’s and buy a shirt, I go to the rack that say it was $29.99 and now it’s $19.99. And then we go up to the cash register, we pull out that little insert from the Sunday newspaper. They got the little scratch-off thing that gives you an extra discount,” he said.

After more than 300 miles of driving through Iowa, Walker made his fifth and final stop of the day at a farm in Haverhill.

The farm itself was immaculate. Walker’s campaign sign hung from a barn painted deep red. Behind him stretched a quintessential Iowa vista: a corn field, a wind turbine, a tractor, grain bins, an Iowa flag. However, it wasn’t a typical day on the farm. Bright artificial lights shone on the governor as he spoke. A campaign camera crew captured his every move.

Among the everyman symbols, there are signs of political stagecraft and a campaign that’s already in full swing.