No Recall, No Scott Walker Presidential Campaign
Three days after Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker formally entered the 2016 White House race, the state’s Supreme Court cleared a dark legal cloud hanging over his bid by siding with the Republican in a long-running investigation into his 2012 recall election.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Mr. Walker’s campaign and a coalition of conservative groups supporting him didn’t violate campaign-finance laws in the run-up to the 2012 recall vote, a race that thrust the Wisconsin governor into the national spotlight.
The court, in a split decision, ordered the prosecutors investigating Mr. Walker and his advisers to “cease all activities related to the investigation, return all property seized in the investigation from any individual or organization and permanently destroy all copies of information and other materials obtained through the investigation.”
Chris Cillizza writes:
Looking back, it's clear that without the recall, there is no Scott Walker presidential announcement today. What the recall did was turn Walker into a conservative hero/martyr -- the symbol of everything base GOPers hate about unions and, more broadly, the Democratic party. He went from someone no one knew to someone every conservative talk radio host (and their massive audiences) viewed as the tip of the spear in the fight against the creep of misguided Democratic priorities. He became someone who had the phone numbers of every major conservative donor at his fingertips. He became what he is today: The political David who threw a pebble and slew the mighty liberal Goliath.
Former top Obama adviser David Axelrod agrees.
@davidaxelrod In airport watching rally with no sound. Did he offer tnx to authors of ill-conceived '12 recall that set him up as GOP hero?
