Nat'l Journal: New brokered-convention fantasy candidate is ... Scott Walker?

In the next presidential cycle, I plan to team up with a major broadcast network to launch a fantasy politics website, complete with drafts, cuts, and (image) injury reports. Frankly, I’m kicking myself for not thinking of it last year; by now, I’d be wealthier than Donald Trump. Still, it would take all my time to keep up with the fantasy roster of political saviors in both parties.

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Today, National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar writes that the buzz now is that Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has hot draft potential for the finals in Cleveland. Everyone, check your line-ups:

After Trump’s de­cis­ive de­feat in Wis­con­sin, it’s dif­fi­cult to see how any Re­pub­lic­an can clinch the nom­in­a­tion be­fore Clev­e­land. Trump needs to win an out­right ma­jor­ity of the vote in his home state of New York, sweep the North­east­ern states in April, win In­di­ana’s pivotal May 3 primary, and fin­ish strong in del­eg­ate-rich Cali­for­nia. Cruz needs to demon­strate that his Wis­con­sin mo­mentum trans­lates in­to the North­east, his most dif­fi­cult re­gion. John Kasich, who has no shot at win­ning a ma­jor­ity of del­eg­ates, simply needs to win some­where out­side of his home state to enter the con­ven­tion with some mo­mentum. The like­li­hood of stale­mate has nev­er been high­er.

Cruz is cur­rently laud­ing the breadth of his GOP sup­port—get­ting Jeb Bush and talk show host Mark Lev­in back­ing the same can­did­ate is one of his new fa­vor­ite talk­ing points—but he may soon find his new­found al­lies will be­come fair-weath­er friends if he can’t com­fort­ably cobble to­geth­er a ma­jor­ity of del­eg­ates at a con­ven­tion. Even some of the un­com­mit­ted del­eg­ates whom Cruz’s cam­paign helped elect have said they’d con­sider oth­er can­did­ates after a first bal­lot.

But for an­oth­er can­did­ate to take ad­vant­age of con­ven­tion chaos, it would take an out­sider who would be an ac­cept­able second choice for both Cruz and Trump sup­port­ers. Ry­an is too much of a Wash­ing­ton insider. Mitt Rom­ney is too close to the es­tab­lish­ment. Marco Ru­bio is dis­liked by too many Trump sup­port­ers. Walker, who per­formed the feat of cam­paign­ing for Cruz while avoid­ing cri­ti­cism of Trump, is one of the few Re­pub­lic­ans left who fits the bill. Don’t be shocked if the can­did­ate who played king­maker in the Wis­con­sin primary could end up be­com­ing king in Clev­e­land.

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Be shocked. Be very shocked.

To be fair, this looks at least a little more plausible than the continually reinflated Paul Ryan bubble. Unlike Ryan, Walker actually did run for the nomination, at least for a few months. That technically satisfies the Ryan Standard that the House Speaker has repeatedly issued while emphatically declining a draft for himself at the convention. Walker even briefly led the polling until Donald Trump showed up and upset all the apple carts in 2015. Furthermore, Walker should have been the option around which Trump opponents coalesced, given his track record of real reform in Wisconsin and defeating Democrats who attempted to demonize him.

However, the reason why Walker didn’t provide that rally point is that he didn’t move voters outside of his Wisconsin constituency for very long. Walker has been a great governor and would have likely made a fine president, but he proved to be unready as a candidate — and that’s not a good resumé for a draft nominee at the convention, especially not against Hillary Clinton. Drafting Walker on the floor at Cleveland would hoist an unprepared nominee atop the ticket with no ground organization, zero votes from Republican voters, and little time to come up to speed on policy — with less than four months before Election Day. Besides, if the delegates at the convention end up balking at either Trump or Ted Cruz, they have an escape hatch in John Kasich, who at least made it through the primaries.

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Anything can happen at a convention … theoretically. Realistically, the nomination is between Trump and Cruz, especially since Cruz has used his organizational superiority to shape the convention battlefield to his advantage if the nomination gets past the first ballot. Cruz’ delegates aren’t going to countenance a Walker draft, or any other kind of draft either. The speculation is fun, but it’s still fantasy.

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