THE HILL: Walker shakes up GOP field with plan to replace ObamaCare.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is jump-starting a debate on ObamaCare with the hope of getting out in front of his GOP rivals on one of the party’s toughest topics.

Walker on Tuesday became the first leading presidential candidate to put forward a detailed replacement plan for the healthcare reform law, a move that will put pressure on his rivals to release their own plans. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), who has trailed in the polls, is the only other candidate with a full plan, which focuses on grants to states.

The move could give Walker an edge with conservative voters in Iowa, where he needs a strong result in February’s caucus votes to solidify his campaign. A few weeks ago, Walker polled as the favorite in Iowa, but his lead in polls has evaporated as Donald Trump pulls ahead.

“Certainly, any time a presidential candidate comes out with a real plan, it creates pressure on other campaigns to do the same. And that is a very good thing,” said Dan Holler, communications director for the conservative group Heritage Action.

Repealing ObamaCare remains a top priority for grassroots conservatives. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) released the outline of a three-point plan but has not provided details. Other candidates have not yet made clear their positions on healthcare policy.

The GOP field reacted to Walker’s proposal cautiously, with only Jindal offering a statement.

He blasted Walker’s proposal, arguing that he is merely setting up a new entitlement program to replace ObamaCare.

Well, at least they’re arguing policy.

VIDEO: SCOTT WALKER CONFRONTS UNION HECKLERS AT IOWA STATE FAIR: “I am not intimidated by you, sir, or anyone else out there. I will fight for the American people over, and over, and over, again. You want someone who’s tested? I’m right here. You can see it. This is what happened in Wisconsin. We will not back down. We will do what is necessary to defend the American people going forward.”

REALITY ASSERTS ITSELF: UK FOLLOWING SCOTT WALKER’S EXAMPLE.

The UK is not exactly a bastion of right-wingery. As a hoary political joke has it: In the UK, they have two parties—the Labour Party, which we in the U.S. would call the Socialist Party, and the Conservative Party, which we in the U.S. would also call the Socialist Party. And in the American context, Wisconsin is not a particularly right-wing state. Why are unions not getting their way in these places?

The answer is not, pace the wailings of Richard Trumka, a labor leader and Scott Walker critic, that Gov. Walker is some unique right-wing monster—and the same holds true for British PM David Cameron. As Richard Aldous pointed out in a must-read essay yesterday, the British voters reelected Cameron because of, not despite, his austerity and reform agenda; likewise, Wisconsin voters chose three times to keep Scott Walker in office.

To the moderate voter, it seems faintly ludicrous that public sector unions, alone of all political advocacy groups, are entitled to government-enforced dues collection. And then, that voter opens the London papers and sees that unionized public sector workers such as London’s tube drivers, who make far more than that same average voter, are going to strike for the second and third time this month over issues that have nothing to do with safety, job security, or any of the supposed traditional arguments for unionization. (The rural-American equivalent would be a school strike in a Wisconsin town over pension and health contribution levels that the average voter can only dream of.)

The waning of the blue model isn’t just an American phenomenon. The inability of Western countries to support and pay for lavish public sector pensions and benefits is becoming more apparent. Voters are giving politicians on both sides of the pond a mandate to do some remodeling.

Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.

JON GABRIEL: Scott Walker and a ‘Return to Normalcy.’

This isn’t the first time a politician listed “aggressively normal” as a selling point. In 1920, America’s political climate was in even greater tumult than today’s. President Wilson had fundamentally transformed the federal government into an oppressive entity that regularly jailed detractors, instituted a then-unimaginable level of regulation, and created the first income tax. Our battered soldiers returned from the charnel houses of Europe to find an executive branch pushing for an even more robust internationalism. By the time the president was incapacitated by stroke (a fact hidden for months), most Americans had had enough.

In a field of flashy candidates, a dull Midwesterner caught the zeitgeist by calling for a “Return to Normalcy”:

“America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”

Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding’s promise of a boring four years delivered a landslide victory from an exhausted electorate. After dying in office he was replaced by our dullest president, Calvin Coolidge, who was succeeded by a third steady hand, Herbert Hoover.

In many ways Walker is the heir to Silent Cal; a leader focused on concrete results with minimal rhetoric and even less drama.

Glamour got us into this fix.

SCOTT WALKER: EVERYTHING THAT HILLARY CLINTON TOUCHES IS A MESS.

As Jon Gabriel tweets, “I’m thinking a Scott Walker-led ‘Return to Normalcy’ campaign will be very appealing in this political climate,” particularly when compared to Hillary, Trump, and Sanders.

SO AFTER ABOUT 4 HOURS, SCOTT WALKER IS FARTHER AHEAD IN THE INSTAPUNDIT READERS’ POLL THAN I WOULD HAVE EXPECTED. And this lead has been consistent from the very beginning.

AN IDEA SO CRAZY IT JUST MIGHT WORK: Scott Walker tells undocumented worker that immigrants must follow the law.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Scott Walker Inquiry Shows the Danger of Secrecy.

In 2010, Wisconsin convened a “John Doe” investigation into the misuse of funds in the Milwaukee county executive’s office. In the state, a judge can allow prosecutors to carry out a John Doe investigation, requiring secrecy from everyone involved. Stuart Taylor explains: “This ‘gag order’ provision, almost unique in American law, effectively disables targets or witnesses from publicly defending themselves or responding to damaging leaks.” In 2012, this somehow spawned a second John Doe probe of Wisconsin conservative groups, who were accused of illegally coordinating with Governor Scott Walker’s campaign, as he tried to hold his office during the recall election.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has finally ended that investigation, which has been stalled for many long months as its targets sued their way through the courts. The ruling mostly relied on technical legal questions: Was the campaign finance statute upon which prosecutors relied unconstitutionally vague? (Yes.) Did Judge Gregory Peterson, the second judge to supervise this investigation, step outside of his remit when he quashed subpoenas and effectively ended the investigation? (No.) Did the judges and prosecutor act wrongly when they accepted their jobs running this investigation? (Also, no.)

But the summation is brutal. It seems clear that the Wisconsin Supreme Court would like to make a broader ruling targeting the behavior of the prosecutors (which you can read about here), and the court’s decision fires a few well-placed shots in that direction. . . .

I found myself nodding along at every word. This investigation never should have taken place. This would be true if conservatives are correct that the investigation’s amoeboid spread and pattern of selective leaks indicate a politically motivated prosecutor doing his best to take down a controversial Republican governor. It would still be true if we are looking at merely one more instance where a special prosecutor roamed out of control, dizzy with a superheroic mandate to hunt down all malefactors wherever they might be found. Either way, the fundamental problem is the same: Government power gone wildly beyond the limits of common sense.

This was a politicized effort by corrupt prosecutors to kill the political opposition for political reasons. For this abuse of power they should wind up broke, disbarred, and in jail.

BILL QUICK: I’m Not Worried About A Scott Walker Sellout. “The signs that justify hope are what Walker has actually done: He has taken on and defeated most of the major pillars of today’s Democrat party: Labor unions, teacher’s unions, bureaucrats, and he has done so with great bravery and effectiveness. No other GOP candidate can point to a similarly effective, hard-core, record.”

CHOOSE THE FORM OF YOUR DESTRUCTOR: The Untouchable: Democrats are Terrified of Scott Walker. They Should Be.

Related: Dear Democrats: You only have yourself to blame for Scott Walker. “Looking back, it’s clear that without the recall, there is no Scott Walker presidential announcement today. What the recall did was turn Walker into a conservative hero/martyr — the symbol of everything base GOPers hate about unions and, more broadly, the Democratic party. He went from someone no one knew to someone every conservative talk radio host (and their massive audiences) viewed as the tip of the spear in the fight against the creep of misguided Democratic priorities. He became someone who had the phone numbers of every major conservative donor at his fingertips. He became what he is today: The political David who threw a pebble and slew the mighty liberal Goliath.”

If you strike me down . . .

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Scott Walker crushes college professor tenure.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s trailblazing effort to weaken tenure protections at public colleges and universities is now a reality with his signing of a $73 billion budget on Sunday.

The effort has outraged unions and higher education groups, leaving them fearful that other lawmakers will follow suit to unravel labor protections in higher education that have long been considered sacred ground.

Walker downplayed the changes at Sunday’s signing at a valve manufacturing facility in Waukesha, Wisconsin, emphasizing instead that tuition was being frozen in the University of Wisconsin system for two more years at the rate it was two years ago.

“We made college more affordable for college students and working families all across the state,” Walker said.

Walker signed the budget as he prepared to announce his run for the Republican presidential nomination Monday. The tenure fight could further endear him to conservatives skeptical of what some perceive as the ivory tower of higher education, and it serves to remind voters of his earlier effort to scale back collective-bargaining rights of public employee unions — including K-12 teachers — when he was first building a national profile.

Walker is thinking like the left — in terms of an ecology of taxpayer-funded activism. He’s cutting it off at the source, rather than fighting the apparat on policy. That’s smart.

And, of course, all is proceeding as I have foreseen.

SCOTT WALKER: I’M IN.

SCOTT WALKER JUMPS THE MARRIAGE SHARK: The Supreme Court did the Republicans a favor by taking gay marriage off the table, Roger Simon writes. Why has Walker put it back on?

ALONE IN FIRST PLACE: Scott Walker Leads GOP In New National Poll. It’s not as sexy when you apply margin of error, but still.

SCOTT OTT: The 7 Reasons Scott Walker Should Get the Republican Nomination for President.

IS SCOTT WALKER the Anti-Bush?

THE HILL: Walker goes strong on foreign policy.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) brought a South Carolina crowd to its feet Saturday during his remarks on national security, a topic generally considered Walker’s Achilles heel as he weighs a run for president.

Addressing the South Carolina Freedom Summit, likely GOP candidate Walker used foreign policy as the climax for his speech, framing the issue as a matter of courage and emotion rather than “something you read in the newspaper.”

“On behalf of your children and mine, I want a leader that is willing to take a fight to them before they take the fight to us,” Walker said, referring to ISIS and “radical Islamic” fighters. The line received a standing ovation.

Walker also repeatedly referred to his trip to Israel, scheduled for this weekend, where he will undergo what the Washington Post described as a “crash-course in foreign policy.”

“We need a president to affirm that Israel is our ally and start acting like it,” he told the crowd.

On reflection, I think we need to let Arab allies seize the ground now held by ISIS. That’s because — unlike us or Israel — they won’t be squeamish about running the firing squads until there aren’t any ISIS fighters left. We and the Israelis, on the other hand, should quietly remove the people funding ISIS.

THAT KEEPS HAPPENING: Another Attack On Scott Walker Boomerangs.

AUDIO: The Power Line Show: We Interview Scott Walker.

TO BE FAIR, SO DID IRAN: Scott Walker bests Obama on Iran.

BYRON YORK: Scott Walker: The GOP’s Great Unknown.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is the leader in some national polls for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. He’s also the least-known candidate in some surveys. There could be a relationship between those two factors.

Start with the new Fox News poll, done the last few days of March. Pollsters gave respondents, all registered voters, a list of seven Republican candidates — Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Walker and Ben Carson. “Please tell me whether you have a generally favorable or unfavorable opinion of each one,” the pollsters asked. And then they added, “If you’ve never heard of one, please just say so.”

Forty-three percent of respondents said they have never heard of Walker — the highest of any GOP candidate except Carson, with 54 percent. In addition, ten percent said they “can’t say” their opinion of Walker. (Bush’s never-heard-of number was eight percent, with ten percent “can’t say.”) Walker’s total was 27 percent favorable, 21 percent unfavorable, with a combined 53 percent never-heard-of or can’t-say. . . .

For a candidate who starts out with little national recognition, a campaign is a long process of telling voters who he is. With the general public — and all three polls cited above were of the public, not just Republicans — Walker is still a mystery for a large number of people. Even some Republicans who know of Walker and like him base their opinion on what they know about Walker’s stand against public-sector unions in Wisconsin, and little beyond that. Despite all the attention the media has paid to the campaign so far, Walker is still starting out when it comes to explaining to voters who he is and why he’s running.

Well, the politically-aware know a lot. The low-info types probably don’t know anyone beyond Jeb and Hillary.

AT LEAST THEY WEREN’T INVESTIGATING SCOTT WALKER’S SWEATER PURCHASES: Fact-Checking The Fact Checkers: Politico Stumbles In Its Super-Sleuthing. It’s like they’re still trying to protect Jonathan Gruber.

BUT IF YOU ASK ABOUT OBAMA’S COLLEGE TRANSCRIPTS, YOU’RE RACIST: PolitFact fact-checks Scott Walker’s claim that he bought a sweater for $1 at Kohl’s.

THIS SEEMS TO GO WELL WITH THE DOWD PIECE JUST BELOW: Imagining Scott Walker vs. Hillary Clinton.

Out walks Clinton and Walker. They shake hands and Walker offers his arm as they walk over to the podiums. The image of a boy scout walking a senior citizen across the street comes to mind. Throughout the debate, she calls him Scott; he calls her Mrs. Clinton. She really is old enough to be his mother. Whenever she talks about the 1990s, his team shoots out e-mails to the media reminding the press that in the 1990s, he was younger than Chelsea is now, but he didn’t get a six-figure deal from a TV network for doing nothing. It’s the opposite of 2008, when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) looked grandfatherly and harried in comparison to then-junior Sen. Barack Obama.

He talks about having to earn everything he’s gotten. Nope, he doesn’t have a famous name or rich friends or Ivy League degrees. He’s much like people all around America. He can’t believe the nerve of some politicians who act like the government belongs to them instead of the people. Three times he’s gone to the voters in four years and been honest and forthright about who he is, what he’s done and what he intends to do. He’s run a state successfully, effectively and transparently. There is no stench of corruption.

Plus: “The contrasts don’t end there. She helped create and still clings to the Obama administration’s failed foreign policy. Walker can tell the bad guys from the good guys.”

PROFESSOR JACOBSON: Scott Walker’s rivals have a plan, a bad plan.