Literally minutes after Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch officially announced their re-election campaign Tuesday, a Hillary Clinton front group rolled out its attack machine against the Republican governor and potential 2016 presidential hopeful.
American Bridge, backed by big-money liberal donor George Soros, “welcomed” Walker and his “failed job creation promise to the Wisconsin governor’s race.”
The liberal “research and communications organization committed to holding Republicans accountable for their words” by employing liberal spin, made its first sortie an all-out assault on Walker’s jobs record, criticizing the governor’s failure to date to hit his ambitious pledge that the state would create 250,000 jobs by the end of his first term.
Liberals again are ready to pump in big money and national resources to take down the man who reformed Wisconsin’s public-sector collective bargaining system, among one of the most active public policy reform agendas since the progressives’ “Fighting” Bob LaFollette.
Walker is fighting back, answering the question Ronald Reagan asked an economically fatigued nation in 1980.
“We’re better off than we were four years ago, but there is more work to be done,” the governor said in his announcement. The tax-cutting governor chose Tax Day to officially jump into the race.
“In the past, April 15 was a day we didn’t have much to look forward to in Wisconsin. But this year, we have hope for the future. This is a new beginning for our state. Wisconsin is back on, and our best days are ahead of us,” Walker said.
In three-plus years, the iconoclastic governor has not presided over a state economy that has created 250,000 jobs. He has, to date, missed his mark.
But the incumbent brings to his re-election bid an impressive resume of accomplishments, including an economy that has added more than 100,000 jobs after the worst recession to Wisconsin and the nation in a generation. With that, Walker can — and does — point to the addition of thousands of new businesses starting up on his watch.