Scott Walker, a former front runner, drops out of the 2016 presidential race. New York Times.

Walker announcing the end of his campaign. New York Times. 

Scott Walker, a former front runner for the Republican candidacy, has dropped out of the 2016 presidential race. New York Times. Announcing the end today, Walker attacked Donald Trump claiming that he has prevented a "positive conservative message" to be heard. Walker's fall from the race is stunning considering at one point he was the undisputed front runner in the race. Back in January he electrified voters in Iowa after giving a speech. Now he is polling between 1 and 3% of voters. Much of this is due to the rise of Donald Trump, who siphoned off a lot of his support. However, Walkers awful performance at both Republican debates, as well as gaff about building a wall on the Canadian border. This caused his fundraising to dry up.

My Comment:

Well, there goes the number one troll candidate. The left hated Scott Walker more then all the other candidates in the Republican field combined. Seriously, if you aren't from Wisconsin, you might not understand how much hate Scott Walker gets. During the union fiasco, he got death threats, a recall election, and a vindictive criminal investigation that targeted his supporters. For the left, it's not enough that Walker failed here. They want him destroyed and that alone makes me sad that he is out of the race. Had he won people would have gone insane. 

But why did he lose so terribly? I think the article is right, the main reasons were the debates and Donald Trump. Walker was just horrible at the debates. He made absolutely no impact and many times during both of them I forgot he was even there. I often wondered if he even had a pulse. And Trump did utterly destroy him in the polls. Walker was seen as an political outsider until an actual outsider showed up and took all his voters. 

I also think he did a poor job of showing why people should vote for him. Sure he tried to tout his experience as a governor but that always boiled down to "I survived attacks from the left" and not what he had actually done. I never really found out what his positions were other then that unions were bad and that immigration was bad. He never really told us what his positions on foreign policy, his stance on the NSA and what he would actually do as president. Trump can get away with being ignorant on the issues because he really is an outsider. But for the hand picked heir apparent? He needed to take some strong stances on the issues and he never really did, at least not in a way that got a lot of attention. 

Shockingly, Walker never really pointed out his 2nd amendment credentials. Under Scott Walker, Wisconsin went to one of the worst states for gun rights to one of the best. When he became governor, Wisconsin didn't have concealed carry, had a waiting period and other restrictive laws. Those things are no longer true and that's because of Scott Walker. But he never pointed that out. Indeed, gun rights hasn't really come up much in this race and the few times it did during the debates, Walker didn't chime in. If I had been in charge of his campaign I would be constantly talking about this, but he never did, at least not during the debates. 

I personally am shocked that Walker is the 2nd guy to go in the presidential race. I figured lower polling candidates, like George Pataki or Lindsey Graham would drop out way before Walker. But I am not too upset about it. For one, Walker never really convinced me that he was presidential. I'm sorry, but fighting unions alone does not mean you are qualified to lead the most important country in the world. He also didn't distinguish himself from the other candidates. To me, I really couldn't tell the policy differences between Walker and Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz. And all of them were more charismatic then Walker was. He always seemed as an "also ran" instead of an actual contender.

There is good news, or really bad news if you don't like Walker. He's still going to be the governor of Wisconsin. Sure unions hate him but like I said before he has done more for gun rights then any other single person in Wisconsin. I was genuinely worried that if Walker had won the presidency, Wisconsin could have elected a Democratic governor who would have rolled back gun rights. For now at least, that won't happen until at least three more years. That alone makes me happy he lost.

So how does Walker leaving impact the race? Not much really. He lost most of his supporters long ago so the 1 to 3% he still had won't make much of a difference. I am guessing his supporters will end up going to one of the establishment candidates like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush. What really needs to happen is for more people to drop out so we can see who is going to be the Trump/Casron/Fiorina alternative. Right now it is all up in the air.