"Unintimidated!" Scott Walker bellowed from the stage of the Des Moines Register's Soapbox. "I am not intimidated by you, sir, or by anyone else out there."

Some folks had popped in from Wisconsin to provide counterpoint to Walker's appearance at the Iowa State Fair. Most of the visitors came from an organization dedicated in raising the minimum wage for Wisconsin's home health-care aides to $15. Most of the visitors were from Milwaukee. Most of them were black. The fearsome gentleman of whom Walker was unafraid was a skinny guy in the middle of the scrum, holding up a sign suggesting that, perhaps, Walker should not be allowed to do to the country what he's done to Wisconsin. Standing on stage, with Iowa State troopers on either side, Scott Walker, American He-man, boldly faced down this sign-waving Bakuninite. The rest of the crowd went wild. Later, Kelly O'Donnell pronounced herself charmed by the confrontation.

"A lot of people talk tough. I'm the person who stood up to 100,000 protesters he wants to warn you about," Walker continued. "The left doesn't want me to be the nominee because they know I just don't talk, I deliver."

That he has people willing to follow him to Iowa in order to take exception to him, of course, makes Walker virtually unique among the itinerant mendicants who have brought their presidential campaigns to this spot on the midway just a few degrees east of the corn dog stands. This is because, alone among the crowd of candidates, Walker most clearly is running on his record of being a complete prick to the right people – which include teachers and nurses and the people who clean up after Alzheimer's patients in group homes. Running against the right people is a staple of all campaigns, right and left, but it's rarely as clear the raison d'etre of one as it is the raison d'etre of the Walker campaign. It is a toxic combination of belligerence and aggressive victimhood. You have to go all the way back to the George Wallace campaigns of 1968 and 1972 to find one that is so clearly defined by the people whose political power it wants to crush.

"We didn't just take on a hundred thousand protestors, some of whom are here today," Walker said. "They didn't intimidate us at the state capitol because in America, they have the right to have their say, but they can't drown out the voices of the millions of people who elected me."

He truly is a remarkable liar, already a far more remarkable liar than even Mitt Romney was, and I didn't think that was possible. For example, the evidence is that while he managed to ram his programs through his pet legislature, he hid behind his capitol police. He took a tunnel to get to the office. He and his pet legislature changed the rules of what was allowed in the Wisconsin capitol building, which always had been open space. He was unintimidated by singing grandmothers because his administration had them arrested and hauled away.

And, it scarcely needs to be mentioned, when 100,000 of his constituents showed up on his lawn, Scott Walker did not deign to meet with them. Hell, Nixon took that famous midnight walk among the antiwar folks back in 1970. OK, he talked about football with them, but at least he was there. Yesterday was one of the few times Scott Walker ever has come within shouting distance of the people who have protested against what he's done to the state.

(And, you have to admit, it takes some big clanging brass ones to talk about "taking on the big special interests" a couple of weeks after giving $250 million of that sweet taxpayer cash to the owners of the Milwaukee Bucks, to say nothing of riding to victory three times on tidal waves of dark money.)

One of them was Clarence Thompson, a health-care worker from the north side of Milwaukee who was standing at the back of the crowd, resplendent in a cheesehead topper. "He avoided those questions at all costs," Thompson said of those days in 2011. "Him running for president is kind of scary. We don't want him to do to the country what he's done to our state. America's already shaky as it is. Elect another Republican, not him. I'm not against the Republican party, but I'm against a politician that could destroy the country.

"I don't disagree with his policy about people receiving benefits taking drug tests. I have to take a drug test to be employed. I have to take a drug test for my money, so I don't have any problem with it. I understand that policy. But he's gutted money from Milwaukee and he's building this new Bradley Center, $500 million. I can't even go to the Bradley Center, and my kid was one of those who had to get moved from one school to another."

Later, Thompson took on the job of chilling out some of the more excitable members of his group, some of whom were getting into it with the local burghers who had come to support Walker. He was sharp enough to realize that it is a very thin line that they had to walk between demonstrating their anger at the candidate and not giving him a great visual to use in campaign ads to scare the white people in Iowa and New Hampshire – Unintimidated!– into giving him money.

"C'mon," Clarence said to a woman who'd been arguing loudly with a man in a Hawkeyes hat. "We need to stay calm about what we're doing." Scott Walker went walking by like a man secure in the knowledge that his job at the fair was done. Kelly O'Donnell was out there, after all, waiting to be impressed.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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