In the 2012 GOP primary, one candidate after another was hyped as an alternative to the establishment favorite. Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum all briefly surpassed Mitt Romney in the polls before poor performances under media scrutiny erased their leads.
Now, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is being touted as the conservative grassroots to Jeb Bush, and he has the numbers to show for it. Walker is the Republican front-runner in the key early-primary states—Iowa and New Hampshire—tied for first in North Carolina, and only trails Bush in the latter’s home state of Florida.
An unscientific Drudge Report poll with almost 450,000 respondents had 44 percent voting for Walker, far ahead of anyone else in the GOP field, and Walker is slightly ahead of Bush in Ohio and trails by a sizable margin in Pennsylvania, according to a Quinnipiac poll.
Walker, who if elected would be the first president without a college degree since Harry Truman, is already being tested for presidential mettle, and the results haven’t been promising. In an interview on ABC, Walker delivered lukewarm replies on foreign policy and immigration reform. When asked whether he would send ground troops to resolve the conflict in Syria as president, Walker said he won’t “rule anything out.”
“I think when you have the lives of Americans at stake and our freedom-loving allies anywhere in the world, we have to be prepared to do things that don’t allow those measures,” he said.
On immigration, Walker settled for a middle-of-the-road answer that could alienate both sides of an increasingly polarized issue, saying that “we can’t ignore the people who come in, whether it’s from Mexico or Central America” but also condemned “amnesty” and said “we can’t ignore the laws in this country.”
