Obama badgers Scott Walker in Wisconsin Obama is employing some of the finest trolling tools imaginable for his Wisconsin trip.

President Barack Obama shook hands and had a laugh with Gov. Scott Walker at the La Crosse, Wisconsin, airport. Then he drove over to the local university campus and compared him to a crazy “Uncle Harry” who’d betrayed the people of Wisconsin and American ideals.

“Wisconsin is this extra state full of extraordinary people,” Obama said, ripping through Walker’s record with specifics, though he never said Walker’s name. “But if you end up having policies that cut education, help folks at the top, don’t expand opportunity, then it’s not going to work. We need better policies.”


Obama was in Wisconsin to formally unveil his administration’s new overtime rule, set to raise wages for up to 5 million workers, as part of a hard-hitting speech ripping into Republicans for opposing him on issues like equal pay for women, raising the minimum wage, workers’ rights, Medicaid expansion and taxing the wealthy.

But it’s no coincidence that Obama’s going to give this kind of speech at this moment in the home state of a politician who’s become the White House’s bête noire. Walker is the Republican candidate the president’s aides always hold up as an example of exactly what’s wrong with politics — and he would be the Democrats’ nightmare scenario, if he were to win the presidency in 2016.

“The contrast between our approach on economic issues and the governor’s is emblematic of the contrast between the president and the Republican Party at large,” a White House aide said Wednesday, ahead of the speech.

Obama mocked the whole Republican field — snarking about the number of candidates, “they’ll have enough for an actual ‘Hunger Games’” — but focused most of his fire on Walker, blaming his policies for a higher unemployment rate than across the river in Minnesota.

“Being an American is not about taking as much as you can from your neighbor before they take as much as they can from you,” Obama said.

Walker’s campaign put out word Thursday ahead of Obama’s visit that he’s officially launching his presidential effort on July 13.

“Here are four times @BarackObama and @TheDemocrats took on Scott Walker and lost,” Walker’s staff tweeted as Obama was speaking, pointing to an unsuccessful recall campaign, Walker’s 2014 reelection, collective bargaining and right-to-work.

Walker’s signature accomplishment as governor was Act 10, a 2011 law that stripped most of Wisconsin’s public-sector unions of their right to bargain collectively and compel payments from nonmembers as compensation for representing them in contract negotiations. The law, which prompted a failed union-led recall effort against Walker in 2012, was a shock to liberals because Wisconsin had been the cradle of the Progressive movement of the early 20th century, and also the first state to give public employees the right to join unions. Then he signed the right-to-work law, outraging many private sector union members who had continued to support Walker through 2014.

“Walker appears to believe that when you squelch worker voices, that’s good for business. I couldn’t disagree more and I know President Obama couldn’t disagree more,” said Labor Secretary Tom Perez. “The difference in philosophy between President Obama and Scott Walker in labor relations couldn’t be more profound.”

Obama himself doesn’t do much handicapping of the Republican race, but people who’ve talked to him say when he does, he tends to express a combination of intrigue and confusion about Walker’s prospects.

Obama rarely talks presidential politics publicly. But the president has already attacked him twice: first issuing a rare White House statement on a state issue in March that attacked the governor for signing a right-to-work law, then a month later swatting away Walker’s criticism of him on the Iran negotiations as “foolish.”

“Perhaps Mr. Walker, after he’s taken some time to bone up on foreign policy, will feel the same way,” Obama said dismissively.

Walker’s campaign pointed to a statement Walker released dismissing the overtime rule as “empty political rhetoric.”

As for Obama’s visit, the Walker campaign welcomed it. The governor comes off better when he’s in a fight, they think, and fighting with this president couldn’t be better in appealing to the GOP base.

“After attacking him in name repeatedly on everything from right to work to foreign policy, it’s no coincidence that President Obama is now coming to Wisconsin to continue attacking Governor Walker in his own backyard,” campaign spokeswoman AshLee Strong said. “Democrats are worried about Walker and see his long list of successes beating liberals in a blue state as a threat.”

“Yeah, I doubt they’re just throwing darts at a map,” said a staffer at the super PAC that’s supporting Walker, referring to the president’s decision to travel to Wisconsin.

Walker wrote “Welcome to Wisconsin, Mr. President” op-ed for Real Clear Politics, and the state Republican Party’s website features a shot of the president on the golf course accompanied by a petition, “Tell Obama We Deserve Real Leadership from the White House.”

Walker is hardly coy about running: He’s already the candidate to beat in Iowa. Hillary Clinton’s campaign doesn’t know what to make of him yet: Will he come off as the Midwestern moderate who fended off a recall in 2012 and cruised to reelection last year, or will he seem like a right wing ideologue who called for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage after last week’s Supreme Court decision?

As much as they like to mock Walker in the White House, some admit to having fears. In their view, he fits with Obama political guru’s David Axelrod’s theory of executive elections, that voters tend to go with the candidate who’s the opposite of the incumbent.

They couldn’t line up more differently: Obama’s professorial, Walker didn’t graduate from college and plays up his man of the people persona; Obama’s multi-ethnic and had an exotic upbringing outside America, Walker spent part of his childhood in Iowa and is a Midwestern pure-bred; Obama’s chased a vision of progressive government, Walker’s got an extensive record of conservative governance.

Axelrod says he’s not concerned.

“Walker appears to be running for president of the Iowa caucuses,” Axelrod said. “He has moved right on immigration, gay rights and other issues on the theory that he has to win the Iowa to be the nominee.”

Axelrod called that “the same Faustian bargain past Republicans have made with the Right in pursuit of the nomination, only to doom their chances in a general election. In the long run, it is a prescription for disaster.”

Democrats in Wisconsin, many of them radicalized by Walker’s policies, are eager to see Obama visit the state.

“There’s a real contrast between what President Obama has accomplished and what Scott Walker has failed to do on the economy,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party spokeswoman Melissa Baldauff, saying that they’re particularly excited to see him come to Wisconsin after the week he’s had.

Baldauff said she’s hoping that Obama’s trip will help the country focus on what they want more people to see about Walker — that he’s an extreme Republican, just with a Midwestern-nice veneer.

On Thursday, it’s Walker who’s in Obama’s sights. But in the punchy mood they’re in over at the White House these days, they say he probably won’t be the last Republican candidate Obama goes after.

“It’s nearly impossible,” the White House aide said, “to go to a state that’s not home to a Republican running for president.”

Daniel Strauss and Timothy Noah contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated Scott Walker’s birthplace. He was born in Colorado.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Kat Borgerding @ 07/02/2015 09:55 AM CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated Scott Walker’s birthplace. He was born in Colorado.