Scott Walker Hitches Wagon To 2001 Assembly Republican Agenda

Ringing in the new year with a whiff of desperation, Scott Walker has decided to tell us all what he's going to do in the first 100 days of his gubernatorial career. Mind you, if one judges by the polls and by fundraising totals, this is almost akin to Dennis Kucinich laying the groundwork for creating the Department of Peace back in 2004.

Walker's plan is groundbreaking in the very fact that it breaks almost no new ground. A casual observer might, in fact, think that Walker simply took the Republican legislative agenda from the last two sessions and copied it onto his letterhead.

There are, however, three points in his plan that will earn him a black eye with moderates, the people who will hold all the power in this particular election:

1. In reforming elections, Walker needs to be clear in drawing distinctions between making it harder to commit voter fraud and simply making voting less convenient. Early voting - casting an absentee ballot at the clerk's office - has been enormously popular. Many people know who they're going to vote for weeks in advance and prefer to vote early to spare themselves the hassle of wasting hours standing in line on election day. Walker would be foolish to go after that practice since it identically mirrors the process that occurs on election day, except for the fact that your ballot is sealed in an envelope when you're done with it. Walker would be smart to split the difference. If you want to vote early for the sake of convenience, go to your clerk's office and vote. Return mail ballots to the previous standard.

2. Repealing same-day voter registration is equally foolish and will not play well with moderates, to whom this will just look like an attempt to make it harder for people to participate in the democratic process. Fair or not, there's still a widely held belief that Republicans love low-turnout elections because it increases their likelihood of success. Doyle will spin Walker's proposal right into that argument and will succeed in doing so - "Scott Walker doesn't want to make it harder for felons to vote. He wants to make it harder for everyone to vote."

3. Walker's property tax freeze proposal requires any referendum to exceed the spending cap to coincide with a regularly held election. That's fine, but Walker needs to include a provision that would allow that requirement to be circumvented in the case of an emergency. Perhaps that decision could be made by a two-thirds (or three-quarters) vote of a legislative body. The point is that without an exception, Walker opens himself up to criticism that he will cripple the ability of government to respond to emergencies involving public safety or public health. Again, in his attempts to be an ideologue, Walker leaves himself wide open to criticism on the sort of "what if?" scenario that makes soccer moms cringe.

If Walker thinks he's going to win the September primary by veering to the right, he's going to be sorely disappointed. The biggest difference between Walker and Mark Green isn't content. It's mannerism. You listen to Mark Green and he seems like a genuine, likeable guy. You listen to Scott Walker and you get the feeling that he's either a climber or someone who's being handled too much by his advisers. And as we all know from our experiences with guys like Tommy Thompson, Herb Kohl, and Russ Feingold, it's often likeability that wins elections in Wisconsin.