On closer examination, Scott Walker’s so-called gaffes look more like carefully considered elements of a larger plan to win the G.O.P.’s 2016 Presidential nomination. Photograph by Danny Wilcox Frazier / Redux

Let’s stipulate up front that Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, is an odious politician whose ascension to the Presidency would be a disaster.

Set aside, for a moment, his repeated refusal, in the past few days, to say whether he believes that President Obama loves America, or whether he believes that the President is a Christian, and look instead at Walker’s record running what used to be one of America’s more progressive states. Having cut taxes for the wealthy and stripped many of Wisconsin’s public-sector unions of their collective-bargaining rights, he is now preparing to sign a legislative bill that would cripple unions in the private sector. Many wealthy conservatives, such as the Koch brothers, who have funnelled a lot of money to groups supporting Walker, regard him as someone who’s turning his state into a showcase for what they want the rest of America to look like.

But just how threatening is he? If you’ve been following the political news during the past week, you may well have the impression that he’s stumbling in his campaign for the 2016 G.O.P. nomination. Among the political commentariat, the consensus of opinion is that Walker’s repeated refusal to distance himself from Rudy Giuliani’s incendiary comments about Obama, and his subsequent encounter with the Washington Post’s Dan Balz and Robert Costa, during which he appeared to question Obama’s religious faith and took some shots at the media for asking him silly questions, weren’t merely reprehensible: they were serious gaffes that raised questions about Walker’s political abilities.

It wasn’t just liberal columnists who piled on. In a column at the Daily Beast, Matt Lewis, who also writes for the Daily Caller, said that Walker’s comments raised the question of whether he “might not be ready for prime time on the national stage.” Lewis went on: “Conservatives should be worried that Walker hasn’t proven capable of navigating these land mines.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, who is a former G.O.P. congressman, wrote at Politico: “Good candidates know how to make dumb questions look, well, dumb.”

Rather than deflecting the reporters’ queries about Obama’s beliefs, as other Republicans had done, Walker used them to send a none-too-subtle message to Republican voters. His refusal to say whether Obama was a Christian wasn’t merely a shot at a hostile media. As Dana Milbank, of the Washington Post noted, it allowed Walker to “wink and nod at the far-right fringe where people really believe that Obama is a Muslim from Kenya who hates America.” Milbank also wrote that Walker was “refusing to grant his opponent legitimacy as an American and a Christian.”

In a more just world, Walker’s indecent and craven antics would disqualify him from playing any further role in the Presidential race. But in the current political environment, his tactics, far from hurting him, may well bolster a candidacy that is already thriving.

Having cemented his reputation as an economic conservative, Walker is busy making a concerted effort to win over social conservatives and evangelical Christians, some of whom apparently believe that Obama is the Antichrist (or perhaps the Seventh King). Earlier this month, during a trip to London, he refused to say whether he believed in evolution, commenting: “That’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in, one way or the other.” In addition to making that hat tip to the Book of Genesis brigade, Walker has been reiterating his opposition to gay marriage and taking a notably harder line on abortion than he did during his gubernatorial reëlection campaign, last year. In a recent meeting with Iowa Republicans, the Times reported earlier this week, he stressed his support for a “personhood amendment” that would define life as beginning at conception and effectively outlaw the termination of pregnancies.

Evaluated in this context, Walker’s comments, or refusals to comment, about Obama’s beliefs look less like gaffes and more like carefully considered elements of a larger plan—and one that’s working for him. On Tuesday, the research firm Public Policy Polling released the results of a new national survey of Republican voters, which showed Walker leading the G.O.P. race, with twenty-five per cent of the vote. He was seven percentage points ahead of the candidate in second place, Ben Carson, the author and neurosurgeon, and eight percentage points ahead of Jeb Bush. “Walker is climbing fast in the polling because of his appeal to the most conservative elements of the Republican electorate,” said P.P.P. “Among ‘very conservative’ voters he leads with 37% to 19% for Carson, 12% for Bush, and 11% for Huckabee.”

This is just one poll, and the sample size was small—three hundred and sixteen—but recent state-level polls also show Walker near or in the lead. In California, according to the highly respected Field poll, he’s favored by eighteen per cent of Republicans. Bush is in second place with sixteen per cent, and Rand Paul is in third place with ten per cent. In Texas, a survey carried out by the University of Texas at Austin shows Walker running second, but he’s trailing local boy Ted Cruz by just one percentage point. When a previous poll was taken, in October, only two per cent of Texan Republicans favored Walker; now, he’s standing at nineteen per cent. In South Carolina, according to another P.P.P. survey, he’s also running second, just one point behind Bush, and leading Lindsey Graham, the state’s senior representative in the U.S. Senate.

It’s still early, very early, of course. But Walker is an ambitious and determined politician who has already been through one tough race—his 2012 recall election—that subjected him to a great deal of media attention and hostility from Democrats. Thanks to his ties to the conservative plutocracy, he’s almost certainly going to have some serious money behind him, and he is trying to pitch his campaign in the sweet spot of G.O.P. primaries, where conservatism and antagonism toward coastal élites meets electability. He has the advantage of youthfulness, at age forty-seven, and, finally, as he pointed out to a convention of Christian broadcasters on Monday, he is, “unlike some out there,” a self-made fellow who “didn’t inherit fame or fortune from my family.” That jab was presumably aimed at Jeb Bush, but if Walker were to get the G.O.P. nomination, it could be modified and directed at Hillary Clinton, assuming that she wins the Democratic nomination.

For all his awfulness, Walker is a serious contender. We’d better get used to it.