Scott Walker, Not Paul Ryan, Could Be the GOP's Cleveland Surprise

The buzz sur­round­ing Paul Ry­an as a GOP pres­id­en­tial nom­in­ee hit a fever pitch this week, after Politico’s Mike Al­len floatedthe pos­sib­il­ity of the House speak­er emer­ging at a con­tested con­ven­tion. But in real­ity, the Re­pub­lic­an more likely to pre­vail in such a scen­ario is an­oth­er Wis­con­sin­ite: Gov. Scott Walk­er.

Ry­an brings sev­er­al un­deni­able as­sets to the con­ven­tion as a pos­sible sleep­er nom­in­ee: He’s well-known na­tion­ally, has the abil­ity to quickly raise funds for a gen­er­al elec­tion, comes from a work­ing-class back­ground, and has ties to both the es­tab­lish­ment and the con­ser­vat­ive grass­roots. But for all his tal­ents, Ry­an has sev­er­al ma­jor vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies as a com­prom­ise nom­in­ee.  

For bet­ter or worse, he’s an out­spoken ad­voc­ate of the elite Re­pub­lic­an agenda of en­ti­tle­ment re­form, free trade, and tax-code over­hauls that many Don­ald Trump sup­port­ers have re­jec­ted throughout the primary pro­cess. Turn­ing to a re­spec­ted Hill in­sider like Ry­an will hardly pla­cate the Trump sup­port­ers; it’s more likely to in­furi­ate them. And if you take Ry­an at his word, he doesn’t even want to be pres­id­ent. “I think you need to run for pres­id­ent if you’re go­ing to be pres­id­ent, and I’m not run­ning for pres­id­ent,” Ry­an told talk show host Hugh He­witt on Monday.

Walk­er, by con­trast, openly har­bors na­tion­al am­bi­tions. As Politico’s Scott Bland re­por­ted, the gov­ernor has con­tin­ued to raise money and travel through the 527 or­gan­iz­a­tion used for his pres­id­en­tial cam­paign. He’s main­tained a busy sched­ule out­side of Wis­con­sin, rais­ing money for the party and re­cruit­ing fu­ture gubernat­ori­al pro­spects as vice chair­man of the Re­pub­lic­an Gov­ernors As­so­ci­ation.

Walk­er was painstak­ingly care­ful not to cri­ti­cize Trump in his en­dorse­ment of Ted Cruz. It was a not­able omis­sion, since Walk­er’s ori­gin­al niche in the GOP field was as the can­did­ate who could unite the blue-col­lar and white-col­lar wings of the party. He had used his cul­tur­al con­nec­tions to win over blue-col­lar Re­pub­lic­ans while tout­ing ex­ec­ut­ive ex­per­i­ence and a re­cord of bust­ing gov­ern­ment uni­ons to win over up­scale Re­pub­lic­ans. His now-for­got­ten “shop­ping at Kohl’s” shtick on the cam­paign trail was a dir­ect ap­peal to many work­ing-class voters who have now sided with Trump.

With Trump sug­gest­ing that an out­come deny­ing him the nom­in­a­tion is a usurp­a­tion of demo­cracy, it’s also much easi­er to sell the broad­er pub­lic on nom­in­at­ing a Re­pub­lic­an who par­ti­cip­ated in the pres­id­en­tial nom­in­at­ing pro­cess. Walk­er was a de­clared can­did­ate for sev­er­al months—and a per­ceived front run­ner—be­fore drop­ping out in Septem­ber 2015. It’s hard to see him turn­ing down an op­por­tun­ity to be nom­in­ated at a con­ven­tion, giv­en his long-stand­ing in­terest in run­ning for pres­id­ent.  

In­deed, Walk­er con­veni­ently pre­dicted last week that an open con­ven­tion would nom­in­ate a can­did­ate who’s cur­rently not run­ning. When he dropped out of the race, he urged the party to co­alesce be­hind a non-Trump al­tern­at­ive—a pres­ci­ent call that few of his rivals heeded. It’s plaus­ible that if his cam­paign had been bet­ter man­aged, and if he had demon­strated a bet­ter grasp of for­eign af­fairs, he’d have been able to live up to his po­ten­tial as the ex­ec­ut­ive with work­ing-class ap­peal.

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.

(Image via Flickr user Michael Vadon)