While the line was a hit among conservative warhawks in Republican Walker's audience, it didn't resonate in the punditocracy at large (even some conservative columnists were taken aback). Really? The US should commit a huge new force of soldiers to the Middle East? Just when -- after a decade of hard slogging and many wounded and dead, and all to problematic result -- we've finally gotten our ground troops out of there? Really?
Walker's spinmeisters apparently noticed the generally negative reaction outside the bubble of unreality inhabited by the GOP's elite, war-happy, self-styled "Vulcans." [Ironic usage, given that Mr. Spock and his pointy-eared race were pacifists.] So the speechwriters and fluffer-nutters got busy.
The result: Campaigning in New Hampshire for president, Walker has adjusted his message, warning that if someone very like him (i.e., him) isn't fighting ISIS and the other bad guys overseas, mano a mano, terrorism “comes to us on American soil.”
Here's just one problem with that reasoning: Lone-wolf terrorists with lots of guns and bombs are already entrenched right here in the lower 48 -- and a goodly number of them so far have turned out to be right-wing, anti-government types. Why not instead make it a priority to root out those existing domestic threats, before we face more truck-bomb style Oklahoma City tragedies?
The enemy within is a broader threat than that, of course, encompassing poverty, injustice, extreme social stratification, a public education system under assault and environmental threats. But, no, none of that matters to guys like Walker as much as rattling our sabres some more in the vicinity of the Mideast oil fields.
I get it: unilateral foreign adventurism produces better campaign optics than diplomacy and international cooperation, at least for the GOP's base. And bigger profits for the good old military-industrial complex. So the Walker battle cry continues unabated. And, indeed, it seems terrorism is getting worse by the minute!
Last week, according to Walker, the bad guys might soon be washing up dead on our shores after floating across the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Now, at least in Walkerspeak word pictures, they're already past our sandy shores and marching across rich American farmland!
Who knows what might happen next without a President Walker at the ready? Why, Red (State) Dawn might already be in the planning: ISIS surreptitiously rents the loft above your garage for use as a regional command center and the next thing you know they've instituted national Sharia law by force. There's simply no time to waste!
To stop all this, we need a super-tough, merciless, "whatever it takes," battle-tested, union-protester-bashing President Walker to send US military ground forces to Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Upper Great Lakes and any other place that's in turmoil! Scott Walker divided and conquered Wisconsin workers, and that's just the experience he'll need to divide and conquer Mideast terrorists. Because, you know, it's all pretty much the same problem.
Or actually, if you study the history of past such war-mongering by other presidents and would-be presidents: No, we don't need any more of this nonsense. Been there, done with that.