Presidential Pining + Passive Aggressiveness = Poor Politics

My, my, but Scott Walker has painted himself, and the rest of the state, into a corner.

Walker hard at work on the
healthcare exchanges. No, honestly!

As I wrote in the beginning of the week, Walker's handling of the pending implementation of health care has been just sickening.

First he stops the groundwork that Governor Jim Doyle had laid in preparation for Obamacare.

Walker, for whatever passes for reason in his thick skull, thought that Obamacare was unconstitutional and spent a ton of taxpayer dollars siccing Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen on a futile effort to stop it.

But he was, of course, wrong.

But he still refused to work on preparations, figuring that the Kochs would be able to buy the presidency for Mitt Romney the same way they bought his governorship. Then Romney and the Boy Wonder, Paul Ryan, would stop it.

However, a funny thing happened on the way to the White House. The American people woke up and rejected their political extremism, their bigotry and their fiscal suicide pact.

So now, due to his two years of passive aggressiveness, Walker is stuck with a difficult choice that he has to weigh against his own presidential aspirations.

The mature, responsible choice would be to proceed with establishing the healthcare exchanges that are required by the federal government. But since it would have been the mature, responsible thing to do, naturally it was immediately rejected by Walker, despite the urging of some of his biggest supporters, including the Wisconsin Manufacturing and Commerce.

Besides the fact that doing something constructive like establishing the exchanges being far above Walker's limited intellectual capacity, Walker wasn't about to establish the exchanges because he is afraid of losing the support of his red-meat, foaming-at-the mouth teahadist base.

Another choice would be to follow the urging of the red-meat, foaming-at-the-mouth teahadists and try to nullify Obamacare. But then again, since nullification is unconstitutional and would cost him the votes of every sane American, he couldn't go with that choice either.

Unwilling to do the correct thing and unable to do the wrong thing, Walker falls back on an old but trusted choice - complete abdication of his duties as governor.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is indicating he will not attempt to create a state health care insurance exchange for Wisconsin residents and will instead delegate that chore to the federal government.

To comply with the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, the governors of the states must inform the Obama administration by Friday whether or not they will pursue federal funding to help them establish the exchanges. If they do not wish to form their own exchanges, the federal government will create the exchanges for them.

Interestingly, it appears that he had a plan to implement a version of the healthcare exchange, but like most things he does, it would have been illegal and he's been slapped around enough by the feds for some of his other idiotic stunts, like trying to put caps on Family Care or privatizing the Income Maintenance Program, the he didn't want to have another one hanging around his neck as he gears up his presidential campaign:

At a meeting of the Republican Governors Association Wednesday in Las Vegas,. Walker said in an interview that he would prefer a state-based exchange program, but that he doubted that the federal government would allow him to shape it as he saw fit.

Perhaps his real fear was that Dennis Smith, Walker's Secretary of Health Services, was too busy committing adultery to find a way to bastardize Obamacare enough to make sure it didn't work but just barely legally enough to keep the feds off his back.

Whatever the reason, Walker has wasted another opportunity to finally show himself a leader. Making it an even greater shame is Walker damn well knows that government run health care does work and how it works.

As I noted earlier, Walker is no stranger to abdicating his duties as a leader. As Milwaukee County Executive, he would often refuse to do his job, forcing other, more civic-minded people - usually the Milwaukee County Board - to pick up his slack. In the case of Obamacare, he is abdicating his duty to the federal government.

After Obamacare is successfully implemented by the federal government, Walker will then use weasel speak in such a way that it will make us miss the double talk that came out of the Romney/Ryan campaign.

Would this face lie?

Walker will try to take credit for the success of Obamacare in an effort to win the independent voters. At the same time, he will go to his teahadist base and blame the feds for any slight misperception of failure, claiming that it wasn't his fault because the feds did it.

The mainstream media and the propagandists - but I repeat myself - will unquestioningly repeat Walker's lies as the gospel truth, as they have done for the past umpteen years.

The worst part is that due to his passive aggressiveness and his ideological idiocy, it has already cost Wisconsin taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. With the further abdication of duty, it will cost us even more money and delay the day that the people of Wisconsin will finally have access to affordable healthcare.

Walker's policy of putting politics before people is not the sign of a good, or even a mediocre leader. That's the sign of no leadership skills whatsoever.