Subject: Wall Street Journal: Scott Walker's Immigration Shift Is His Latest Tack to Right
From: DNC Press <[email-masked]>
To: DNC Press <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2015 23:39:57 +0000

Key point: At each step in the Wisconsin governor's career, he has run against Republican opponents with one overriding strategy: Never letting anybody get to the right of him. That helps explain his move this week to instantly embrace the toughest position on immigration after Republican presidential primary opponent Donald Trump<http://topics.wsj.com/person/T/Donald-Trump/159> released his policy platform on the matter.
Scott Walker's Immigration Shift Is His Latest Tack to Right<http://www.wsj.com/articles/scott-walkers-immigration-shift-is-his-latest-tack-to-right-1440111745>
Republican presidential candidate has a long history of dropping moderate positions in his races
WALL STREET JOURNAL // REID J. EPSTEIN

In 1993, Scott Walker ran to the right of his rivals on abortion, opposing it in all circumstances, including the life of the mother. In 2006, he changed a long-held position against the death penalty. And in 2010, in a matter of hours, he flipped from opposing to supporting an Arizona crackdown on immigrants.

At each step in the Wisconsin governor's career, he has run against Republican opponents with one overriding strategy: Never letting anybody get to the right of him. That helps explain his move this week to instantly embrace the toughest position on immigration after Republican presidential primary opponent Donald Trump<http://topics.wsj.com/person/T/Donald-Trump/159> released his policy platform on the matter.

After slipping in polls in must-win Iowa, Mr. Walker is positioning his campaign to compete with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for the slice of the GOP electorate angry with everyone in Washington. It's a plan with one big condition attached. For it to work, Mr. Trump will need to alienate those voters, who are rallying to him, or quit the race.

"He understands the anger that people are feeling out there and the reason why Donald Trump is catching on the last six weeks," said Jonathan Burkan, a Walker fundraising bundler who participated in a Monday conference call in which the governor sought to reassure jittery supporters by promising to show more passion on the stump.

"If the voters decide not to support Trump, they want those voters. They don't want to give up those voters," Mr. Burkan said. "All campaigns have to adjust tactics all the time."

After facing little blowback for his shifting positions before, the candidate who titled his autobiography "Unintimidated" is attracting scrutiny now. "Until this summer, I was the only candidate who had a message focused on helping American workers by putting common-sense limits on this surge of immigrants," Republican rival Rick Santorum said Thursday. "Gov. Walker was first to change his position."

Mr. Walker declined to be interviewed. His spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, said his repeated electoral victories are proof his constituents understand andback his policies. "The people of Wisconsin know what he stands for and have repeatedly supported his agenda," she said.

The governor's willingness to adapt his positions began at the start of his career. In the 1993 race for a Wisconsin State Assembly seat, the four Republican primary opponents that the 25-year-old college dropout faced were all more accomplished. One had lived in the district for 20 years and had the endorsement of the Milwaukee newspapers. Another was the lobbyist for the Milwaukee chamber of commerce and had the most money. Another led a prominent local antitax organization. The fourth was a local assistant district attorney.

Mr. Walker beat them all by at least 20 percentage points, in large part by appealing to social conservatives. He pronounced himself opposed to abortion in all cases, including after rape and incest, winning the backing of Wisconsin Right to Life, the state's anti-abortion rights organization.

Barbara Kraetsch, who had the Milwaukee newspaper endorsements, says the Right to Life endorsement was the only one that mattered. "My position was that government should do everything to discourage abortion, but not make it illegal," she said. "I was vilified for that."

When he first ran for governor in 2006, Mr. Walker was again an underdog in the GOP primary against Green Bay congressman Mark Green. Struggling to gain traction, he reversed his long-held stance opposing capital punishment. Mr. Walker said he had been swayed by advancements in DNA technology and now backed a statewide advisory referendum to reinstitute it."The timing certainly doesn't hurt," Walker told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel of his change of heart during the primary race. Mr. Walker ultimately fell behind in the polls, ran out of money and quit the race.

By the time he ran for governor again in 2010, he was the establishment candidate. Still, Mr. Walker made sure not to get outflanked by primary opponent Mark Neumann, a former congressman campaigning on his willingness to buck the House GOP leadership.

After Mr. Neumann backed an Arizona law requiring police to check the status of anyone they thought might be illegal, Mr. Walker said he had "serious concerns" about the law. When his campaign Facebook page was instantly flooded with criticism from conservatives, Mr. Walker changed his mind that afternoon.

He also followed Mr. Neumann's lead in opposing a state smoking ban, even though as Milwaukee County executive he had forbidden smoking outside county buildings, and his wife was, and remains, a fundraiser for the American Lung Association. After he won the election, he never sought to alter the smoking ban, and later declared it a success.

During his 2014 re-election campaign, Mr. Walker softened his tone on social issues. He aired a TV ad on abortion that touted legislation he supported that left "the final decision to a woman and her doctor," and he declared the gay-marriage an issue "resolved" after a federal judge invalidated the state's ban on same-sex weddings.

But in a February appearance before religious broadcasters in Nashville, Tenn., Mr. Walker hardened his rhetoric. "I think of strong families and I think it starts with a strong marriage," which comprised a husband and a wife, he said. During the same speech, he stressed his opposition to abortion, noting that he carries in utero photographs of his two sons with him.

Mr. Walker's shift on immigration is a particularly sharp turn.

For more than a decade, he was a relative progressive on the issue. In 2002, he signed a resolution calling for "a new program similar to the Federal amnesty program enacted by Congress in 1986." In 2013, as Congress debated overhauling federal immigration laws, he said in separate interviews that more border security wasn't necessary and that he backed a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Mr. Walker has now renounced his past support for a path to citizenship and suggested he would reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country. When an MSNBC reporter asked him Monday if birthright citizenship guaranteed under the 14th Amendment should be ended, his reply was: "I think that's something we should, yeah, absolutely, going forward."

Mr. Walker said his policy adjustments don't make him inconsistent or, in political terms, a flip-flopper-a dangerous label for a candidate presenting himself as a fighter with political backbone. His past public support for more liberal immigration proposals, Mr. Walker said during a May Fox News TV interview, was irrelevant because he didn't have authority to act on them.

"There's not a flip out there," he said. "I don't have any impact on immigration as a governor."