Scott Walker’s standing in Iowa has disintegrated, and he can’t blame Donald Trump.

The Wisconsin governor once-heralded by political insiders as the front-runner for the GOP nomination is struggling with perceptions that he is inconsistent at best and a full-out flip-flopper at worst. According to Iowa Republicans, the reality of Walker the candidate just cannot keep up with the sky-high expectations set before he even entered the race.


“Walker’s issue is, his campaign and the people friendly to him in the conservative media… built up a level of expectation for him that was simply impossible to meet,” said influential conservative Iowa radio host Steve Deace, who is backing Ted Cruz but was until August also seriously considering Walker. “Now when people see him, they don’t see him as the everyman they can relate to. They see disappointment. ‘This is the fighter from Wisconsin? Where’s the fighter? Where’s the energy?’ And I don’t know how he can combat that, I really don’t.”’

In Iowa, where Walker was supposed to perform best among the early-voting states, he is now polling at only 3 percent, according to a Friday poll from Quinnipiac University. And short of a miracle on the debate stage next week, other Republicans say, it’s hard to see how he comes back.

“There was a ton of excitement about Scott Walker, and that’s subsided some,” said Karen Fesler, a prominent Iowa activist who is aligned with Rick Santorum.

In January, before Walker launched his campaign, he delivered a blockbuster speech at an Iowa confab hosted by conservative Rep. Steve King. He rode the bump in the polls that followed for months, building the sense that he was the candidate to beat in Iowa.

While his campaign stopped short of calling the caucus state a must-win, campaign manager Rick Wiley has said Walker expects “to do really well” in Iowa, where he made 11 stops in three days after jumping into the race in July. At the time, eight in 10 Iowa Republican insiders surveyed by POLITICO said Walker would win the state if the caucuses were held then.

But in the ensuing weeks, he has appeared scripted and wooden on the stump. He gave short answers and a largely unmemorable performance in the first debate, and the latest poll shows he has fallen 15 points since July.

Certainly, it's early, and the favorability ratings for Walker, who hails from neighboring Wisconsin but spent several years of his childhood in Iowa, remain solid at 62 percent, fourth in the field on that measure. Another 20 percent of those surveyed said they didn't know enough about Walker — a sign that his campaign has room to grow.

But it is nearly unheard of for a candidate who peaks in the summer in Iowa and then drops sharply to make a comeback in time for the caucuses.

Walker "was not out here frequently to capitalize on the interest on him for the six months after that January speech, and then clearly wasn't ready because he was on three different sides of two-sided issues on a couple of different occasions," said Doug Gross, a former chief of staff to Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. "So as a result people just lost confidence that this guy was our alternative. He no longer was a bright shiny penny, instead he was all scuffed up and thrown away."

While Walker has crumbled, Trump gained steam, sucking much of the oxygen out of the field. And in recent weeks, to the extent Walker has been in the spotlight, it’s been for coverage of a series of seeming inconsistencies on policy, whether on immigration and birthright citizenship, or gay marriage and abortion (and a while back, on ethanol). These stumbles have hurt him nationally, but even more so in Iowa—and Walker’s hard fall can’t be pinned on Trump alone, according to prominent Iowa Republicans, both aligned and unaligned with other campaigns.

“Trump has taken pretty brash and extreme positions, and for whatever reason, Walker has felt the need to follow, and then walk back, and then walk around,” said an Iowa Republican assisting another candidate. “Everything Walker seems to be saying is not Trump’s fault, that’s Walker’s fault…it’s all self-inflicted. People want to blame Trump, but it’s all about how you react and adapt.”

An unaffiliated Iowa Republican added Walker seems to have gotten complacent and is playing it too safe: on policy issues he’s landed at “the mushy middle, allowing other people to eat his lunch,” and he has refused at times to give straight answers on a long list of issues, ranging from whether he agreed with Donald Trump's attacks on illegal immigrants, to whether the Confederate flag at the South Carolina statehouse should come down or even if he would participate in the ultimately ill-fated Iowa Straw Poll.

“Clearly Trump is taking support from everybody, his numbers are growing and they’ve got to come from somewhere, it’s not a huge surprise that Walker’s falling in polls,” said this source, who could speak freely only on condition of anonymity. “But if you look at somebody who goes from first to almost worst, it’s got to be more than just [because] of someone else. It’s about him and his campaign.”

“If you play small ball, if you play it safe, you’re giving other people a chance to speed by you. Walker didn’t do any one thing wrong, he just didn’t do anything right,” said this Republican.

And to the extent Trump has hurt Walker, it's by undercutting the governor's ability to play the outsider card. Walker may be a Washington outsider, but he has still held political office for virtually his entire professional life, putting him at odds with the current GOP primary zeitgeist that rewards candidates--particularly Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina--who have never worked in government.

That mood "is what shaped things for Gov. Walker," said Sam Clovis, a well-known Iowa activist who is aiding Trump, but warned against fully counting Walker out. "Regardless of how hard he tries to come out as an outsider, people recognize he's a long-time serving politician in Wisconsin. That pushes him into [being] an establishment candidate."

His campaign didn't directly respond to questions about how Trump has affected Walker's standing. He is still devoting significant time to Iowa, including meet-and-greets across the state and two tailgates ahead of the big University of Iowa-Iowa State game this weekend.