IN NORTH CAROLINA? SEE GOV. SCOTT WALKER AT THE MARTIN CENTER’S 20TH ANNIVERSARY GALA, SEPTEMBER 21. The teachers’ unions and universities still hate him, so you know he’ll be worth hearing from on education reform.

I LIKED SCOTT WALKER, BUT YEAH: “What sets Mr. DeSantis apart from Mr. Walker? To be blunt: how many people already say they want him to be president.” “Overall, Mr. DeSantis has 32 percent support in polls taken since the midterm elections. This is not a fleeting product of a wave of favorable media coverage. Instead, he has made steady gains in the polls over the last two years. Mr. Walker, in contrast, had 7 percent in the early polls.”

SCOTT WALKER’S REVENGE: Wisconsin Republicans on the Verge of Total, Veto-Proof Power. “If Wisconsin Democrats lose several low-budget state legislative contests here on Tuesday… it may not matter who wins the $114 million tossup contest for governor between Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and Tim Michels, a Republican. Those northern seats would put Republicans in reach of veto-proof supermajorities that would render a Democratic governor functionally irrelevant…. The Republican leaders in the Wisconsin Legislature say they will bring back all 146 bills Mr. Evers has vetoed during his four years in office — measures on elections, school funding, pandemic mitigation efforts, policing, abortion and the state’s gun laws — if they win a supermajority or if Mr. Michels is elected.”

Good luck, guys.

GET IN THEIR FACE, AS A FAMOUS PRESIDENT ONCE URGED: As YAF president, Scott Walker vows to ‘open the eyes of the next generation.’

SCOTT WALKER TO DC? THE TIMING’S RIGHT. Report: Walker listed as possible replacement for Trump’s interior secretary.

THIS IS TOO BAD: Scott Walker loses bid for third term in Wisconsin. But a third term is hard to pull off.

GOOD: Supreme Court Deals Massive Blow To Government Unions. This is basically Scott Walker on a national level. Of course, if the unions provided value, they wouldn’t have to force people to pay dues.

At any rate, I agree with FDR that public employee unions are a conspiracy against the public. More on FDR’s view here.

THESE CONFRONTATIONS HAVE ALWAYS WORKED OUT SO WELL FOR THEM: Gov. Scott Walker confronted by Democrat over Obamacare repeal.

IT’S A SMART PLAYBOOK: On Labor and Beyond, Trump Is Following Scott Walker’s Playbook.

UNIONS VS. THE PUBLIC: The Walker Model Gains Momentum in the Midwest.

Scott Walker’s successful efforts to curb the bargaining power of public employee unions may not have translated into a successful bid for the GOP nomination, but they are gaining traction among other Republican governors at the state level. . . .

It’s significant that ground zero for public sector union reform is the upper-Midwest, once the capital of organized labor. Democrats try to cast such reforms as a betrayal of workers, but in a post-industrial age when half of union members are public employees whose demands for fatter benefits packages come at direct expense of the taxpayers, many voters don’t see it that way. As James Sherk noted in our pages last year, “A movement formed to defend blue-collar laborers now fights primarily to help white-collar workers expand government.”

FDR was right about public-sector unions and why they should be prohibited: “Unthinkable and intolerable.” Plus: “The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers.”

BRIDGET JOHNSON REPORTS FROM CPAC: Gov. Scott Walker Compares Today’s ‘Angry Mobs’ to 2011 Wisconsin Protesters.

SCENES FROM SCOTT WALKER’S WISCONSIN: Wisconsin’s budget picture gets $714 million brighter.

Fiscal bureau director Bob Lang reported tax revenues are expected to be $455 million higher than what the Department of Administration projected in November. Also, spending in the current fiscal year that ends June 30 is expected to be $226 million lower — largely due to lower-than-expected Medicaid enrollment — and other revenues are expected to be $33 million higher.

That turns what was thought to be a $693 million deficit for the upcoming budget into a $21 million surplus, including all departmental budget requests.

It also adds more cushion to the state’s bottom line as it closes out the 2015-2017 budget cycle. Previously the net balance was about $40 million. The latest estimate has the state closing out the year with a $362.2 million ending balance.

The additional revenue helps explain why Gov. Scott Walker has been able to promise several additional spending proposals in his upcoming 2017-2019 budget proposal, such as a “significant increase” for K-12 schools, a University of Wisconsin tuition cut back-filled with state taxpayer dollars and $100 million more for local roads and rural broadband.

Wisconsin Democrats, to borrow a phrase, should be thanking him.

RAND PAUL AND SCOTT WALKER WERE MY EARLY FAVES, BUT NEVER GOT TRACTION. HMM. Democrats Were Worried About Rand Paul, Leaked Email Reveals: At the same time Democrats were advised to “elevate” Donald Trump.

So when Hillary tells you how awful Trump is, remember that she maneuvered to make him the GOP nominee…

GREAT MOMENTS IN SELF-AWARENESS: Bernie Sanders, a fan of communist regimes, says Scott Walker’s ideology ‘kills people.’

A YEAR AGO, HE WAS MY FIRST CHOICE: Scott Walker’s Reforms Have Saved Wisconsin Taxpayers Billions.

NOW CAN WE HAVE SOMETHING AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL? Scott Walker signs civil service overhaul.

Gov. Scott Walker signed legislation Friday overhauling the state’s century-old system of merit hiring and firing, gaining the first legislative priority he set after calling off his presidential bid last year.

Inking the legislation at the offices of ManpowerGroup, Walker said the rewrite of the state’s civil service law would help the state keep the best possible employees and ensure that the state remains “efficient, effective and ultimately accountable to the people of Wisconsin.”

“This is really about bringing Wisconsin into the 21st century when it comes to recruitment and retention,” the Republican governor said.

Walker said the state needed to learn from the private sector hiring practices of companies like Manpower, a global human resources giant, and update its policies for hiring, overseeing and firing the 30,000 state workers affected by the changes.

Walker said the state is keeping its principles of hiring according to merit rather than politics, but is updating a system that had become too slow and inefficient.

It’s time to face up to the reality that the 19th Century notion of an apolitical professional civil service is dead. What we have now is a politicized monoculture in support of one party and one agenda.

HE’S NO SCOTT WALKER. Time to Talk About John Kasich’s Biggest Failure as Ohio Governor: Union Reform.

SCOTT WALKER: OUT OF THE RACE, BUT STILL SITTING ON A THRONE OF SKULLS.
“Union membership in Wisconsin collapsed in 2015, falling well below the national average for the first time… and thinning the ranks of the labor movement by tens of thousands of workers in one of its former bastions.”

WE SHOULD BE SO LUCKY: Governor Scott Walker’s Campaign Legacy: His Labor-Policy Reforms..

REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE SURVIVOR: First they came for Rick Perry, then they came for Scott Walker. Roger Simon asks who will be the next candidate to be booted off the island?

Related: Rubio Moves Decisively in the Wake of Walker Exit.

ASHE SCHOW ON Scott Walker’s Flameout: “Despite having survived three elections and being invited to speak at conservative conferences across the country, Mr. Walker appeared not ready for primetime.”

Watching candidates bumble around, you think it must not be very hard. Then you try it yourself and you discover that they bumble around because it’s very hard.

SCOTT WALKER SAID TO BE QUITTING PRESIDENTIAL RACE.

Too bad — he could have been a remarkable president, but Trump sucked all of the oxygen out of the room this past summer.

GOOD IDEA: Scott Walker proposes ban on government unions.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker laid out a proposal Monday to completely overhaul the nation’s labor union laws, calling for eliminating most of the advantages private-sector unions have under federal law and prohibiting public-sector unions altogether.

The proposal, if enacted, would represent the most radical change to federal labor law in almost a century, making Walker’s labor reforms in his home state seem modest by comparison. They also would be a massive blow to the strength of organized labor, a major player in Washington politics and staunch ally of the Democratic Party.

Walker said the proposals were aimed at strengthening the rights of individual workers, which under current federal labor law are often sacrificed to bolster union strength. Unions would still exist, but they would be voluntary organizations with workers able to join or leave whenever they felt.

Related: Non-Union Workers More Happy With Work Than Union Members.

SCOTT WALKER: WHAT WENT WRONG? “Walker is a conservative but not a fire-breather. That made his attempt to straddle the grassroots and the establishment — which would have been difficult for any politician — harder to pull off:”

Of course, it’s still early. The old baseball cliché that you are never as good as you seem when you’re winning and never as bad as you seem when you’re losing often applies to politics. And Walker, like all of the candidates this year, has been buffeted by an unexpected force. No one would have guessed that the candidate who talks of buying affordable shirts at Kohl’s and campaigns at Harley-Davidson outlets would get shoved aside in Iowa by a loudmouthed billionaire who brags about his incredible wealth and woos voters by taking their children for rides in his helicopter.

Oh I don’t know – look at the run that Newt Gingrich gave milquetoast Mitt Romney in 2011 simply by being an MSM-attacking fire-breather himself.

A FADING CAMPAIGN: Scott Walker’s no-good month.