Republican Presidential candidate and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said Monday that he wouldn’t spare his own party from attacks, if elected.
Walker made the remarks while campaigning at the Iowa State fair as part of an attempt to portray himself as a scrappy outsider.
“They told you during the last election that if we just elected a Republican senate, the leadership would put a bill to repeal Obamacare on the desk of the president,” he said. “It’s August. We’re still waiting for that measure.”
The candidate, a favorite of the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, introduced his broadside by calling the nation’s capital “68 square miles surrounded by reality.”
He also claimed that his popularity on the right could be attributed to the fact the he has taken on his own party as governor–in addition to the high profile public sector union-busting he supported. The anti-labor initiative made him the target of massive protests, a hero to many conservatives, and the subject of nationwide attention in 2011.
In June, Walker turned heads on the right when he said he supported abolishing the filibuster to get an Obamacare repeal through the Senate. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) responded by saying the governor’s proposal would “ultimately undermine conservative principles.” The day before he and other senators said they would use reconciliation–the arcane procedure used by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) to pass Obamacare in 2010—to repeal the landmark law.
Even if an Affordable Care Act repeal passes the legislative branch during the 114th Congress, it is highly unlikely that it will advance with the two-thirds majority in both chambers required to override a presidential veto.
Tweaks to congressional procedures during any such political theater may end up having lasting consequences, however, and aren’t unlikely with some conservatives still sore about Reid’s 2013 decision to scrap the 60-vote threshold required to advance judicial nominations.
