Walker rejects the idea that his actions have created a sharply divided electorate. "Most of the people in our state, I've found, aren't particularly pumped up one way or another. They care more about what happens under the roof of their house than what happens under the dome of the capitol," he said.

If there is polarization, he says, it is the other side's fault: "the national big government unions" who "poured tons of money" into the state and "ginned up their members" with "distortions" of Walker's positions.

The unions and their allies have submitted a million signatures, nearly double the amount needed, for the Walker recall. A state board has undertaken a review of the petitions -- the process itself has, naturally, become contentious -- with the recall likely to be scheduled sometime between April and August. More legislator recalls also are in the works.

Already, Walker's campaign has spent about $7 million on television ads (outside groups that support him have poured in millions more). They are chiefly positive spots that feature Wisconsinites talking about how life has gotten better under his governorship.

This is why Walker predicts he will win: "A year ago, the national unions came in and scared people into thinking the world was going to end. All these awful things were going to happen," he told me. "A year later ... not only the sky didn't fall, things aren't bad like they predicted, [and] in many cases things are better." Unemployment is down, there have been no mass layoffs of teachers, most people's property taxes didn't go up. (You'll notice, though, that Walker doesn't claim he didn't raise taxes; rather, in his speeches, his claim is that he lowered the "overall tax burden." That's because he raised taxes on some while lowering them on others, chiefly businesses.)

Walker himself acknowledges now he could have done a better job introducing and making the case for his collective bargaining proposals, which were unveiled just six weeks into his governorship. But the problem was one of marketing, not policy, said Mark Graul, a Green Bay-based Republican consultant who ran the Bush-Cheney campaign in Wisconsin in 2004.

"The reforms that the governor made were ones that the public agreed with in concept," Graul said. "That's what's been lost in all this. You're not going to see a single campaign ad run against Scott Walker saying public employees shouldn't have to pay more of their health care and retirement."

In Walker's telling, he never set out to be a provocateur. "A year ago, I just saw a problem -- kind of like somebody coming in and taking over a small business -- I saw a problem, saw a solution and set out to fix it, never dreaming that it could draw national attention or have a national impact."

Nonetheless, Walker has become a national lightning rod -- a frequently featured villain in the broadcasts of liberal talk-show hosts like Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz, and Keith Olbermann; a rockstar on the right who gets a hero's welcome from conservative audiences around the country, including at his recent dinner speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.