Wisconsin is a mid-sized state with about 3.5 million voters. Gov. Scott Walker took office just 54 weeks ago, and already 1 million of those voters–slightly more than half of whom actually voted in 2010–want him out of office badly enough that they signed a recall petition. In the winter. In a 60 day period that included Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year’s. And the UW Badgers winning the Big Ten football championship.
That’s not a good sign for Gov. Walker. It’s not a good sign for Mitt Romney either.
Right now the Romney campaign is busy trying to crush the Gingrich and Santorum campaigns in advance of South Carolina’s primary on Saturday. Assuming they do, then Romney strategists will shift to thinking about how to put together 270 electoral votes to defeat Barack Obama on November 6. When they do, they’ll realize that Wisconsin is just the most notable of several examples of a huge obstacle to Romney’s presidential aspirations: newly-elected Republican governors in “swing states” who are wildly unpopular; and–perhaps more importantly–who have generated a massive and well-organized Democratic opposition.
Romney doesn’t have to worry about the 1 million petition signers in Wisconsin; that’s Walker’s problem. Romney’s problem is the tens of thousands of leaders and organizers who went out and got those signatures. (Did I mention the cold? the holidays? the Packers in the playoffs?) Whether Walker wins or loses a recall election this summer, the Wisconsin-for-Romney campaign is almost certainly going to face a fired up and well-organized field operation aimed at re-electing Pres. Obama, and electing as many Democrats up and down the ticket as possible. A field operation of that magnitude and intensity, in addition to getting out the vote on Election Day, can act as a low-cost firewall against an inferno of SuperPAC television ads and robocalls.
How the US economy performs in the next 9 months is the single most important factor in determining the outcome of November’s election. But having to overcome the dead-weight of wildly unpopular Republican governors like Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and John Kasich just makes the GOP’s job harder.
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/
