Scott4Gov.com and the Walker Campaign

I was catching up on my news for the week and stumbled across this juicy morsel buried deep within a Dan Bice/No Quarter column earlier this week:

Mystery unsolved

From the start, it’s not been clear who’s behind the sometimes entertaining but always prolific blog, Scottforgov.com. The blog insists it is independent of County Executive Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaign.

But just recently someone raised the following question on Walker’s Facebook page: “Why is John Schulze blogger behind the anonymous Scottforgov.com? What a coward.”

The question was quickly scrubbed from the page. Schulze is a former aide to then-Gov. Tommy Thompson who now works as a lawyer at American Transmission Co.

Reached last week, Schulze said information in the question is only partially correct.

He said he did write some of the posts on the blog, which regularly skewers Walker’s Republican gubernatorial opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann, and Walker’s Democratic gubernatorial foe, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. But Schulze said he hasn’t written for it in months and wasn’t the brains behind the operation.

So who is?

“That person wants to stay anonymous,” Schulze said.

As an anonymous blogger myself, I’m sensitive to John Schulze’s situation.  No anonymous blogger wants to be found out – thus the anonymity.  After all, it’s nice to have a job, be able to pay the rent, eat, etc.

However, I struggle to feel bad for him.  For one, the bile-laced spew regularly vomited by Scott4Gov’s authors is no different than the type of garbage churned out in campaign seasons by low-class social revolutionary hatchet shops like One Wisconsin Now.  They specialize in taking comments out of context, and spinning them viciously against anyone who is not adequately supportive of their candidate or agenda – in this case Scott Walker.

But there is more here than meets the eye.

You see, most of all, my lack of sympathy stems from Scott4Gov’s now obvious lie – that it is independent of the Walker campaign (which they took the opportunity of the Bice column to reiterate – talk about guts).  Every grassroots Republican in southeast Wisconsin knows that Schulze has been a key member of Walker’s inner circle for years.  I have no idea if he has been on the payroll in any way, but if it’s supposed to be a secret that he’s been providing political advice to Walker and his campaign team, it’s the most poorly kept secret in Milwaukee County.

That means Scott4Gov is lying to its readers.  If you can’t believe their claim to be independent, how can you believe anything they post?

And how can Mark Belling run with anything spoon-fed to him by these people and still trust them as a reliable source?  That’s another post for another day.

Personally, I like Scott Walker and believe he would be a fine governor.  But I am sick and tired of being treated like an idiot by the Walker campaign.  So I’m supposed to believe that Scott4Gov is “independent” of the Walker campaign when one of Walker’s political advisors gets caught red-handed as one of its contributors?

Don’t patronize me.

Stupid unforced errors like this will cost Walker the election when he’s in the big time this fall.

Walker should show some leadership and do one of two things: 1) Have his aides discontinue Scott4Gov; or 2) Officially annex Scott4Gov into his campaign, where it is apparently already coming from, and have the guts to apply his name to the slash-and-burn spin emanating from it.

Some time ago, I lamented the devolution of conservatism from the classy, intellectual movement of William F. Buckley, Jr. into the teeth-clenching, commercialized movement of Ann Coulter.  Scott4Gov is a local embodiment of the angry conservatism that has saturated the Republican base and it’s sad that Walker’s people are trying to exploit the anger of the movement for political gain.

Contrast that to Paul Ryan, who is out there making a reasoned, broad-based and intellectual case for conservatism.  No populist brown bags, no spiteful shadow bloggers – just ideas and solutions.

So tell me… which of these guys has a better plan for the expansion of conservatism?