Republican National Convention, where he was received as rapturously as any speaker was, I have made Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, no worse than 3-1 to be the Republican nominee for president in 2016. To me, he had everything going for him, including the right corporate connections, and he had one thing all the other possible contenders didn't have. He beat, in a relatively fair fight, after they'd spent millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours trying to recall him, almost every liberal group — unions, public school teachers, minorities, public employees — loathed by the Republican base. That gave him street-fightin' cred on the right unmatched by the likes of Marco Rubio or "Bobby" Jindal.

My opinion did not change over the next few months. I watched him outdraw, and vastly out-enthuse, his cheesehead homeboy, Paul Ryan, at the New Hampshire state Republican convention about a month before the election. Over the past couple of weeks, he's been the point man among the Republican governors in the effort to derail the Affordable Care Act out in the states. Only a few days ago, he was waxing profoundat the Reagan library. However, there always was one thing out there laying for him in the dangerous dark.

And that would be this.

Gov. Scott Walker and his top campaign and Milwaukee County aides were named Monday as part of a team that routinely commingled political and official county business. The disclosures came during the sentencing of a former aide to Walker during his last year as Milwaukee County executive. Kelly M. Rindfleisch, 44, was sentenced by Milwaukee County Circuit Judge David Hansher to six months in jail and three years of probation on a single felony count of misconduct in office. The judge stayed the sentence pending Rindfleisch's appeal to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals or the state Supreme Court. In a lengthy presentation during Rindfleisch's sentencing, Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf displayed numerous emails between Rindfleisch and key members of Walker's campaign staff in which they discussed how to manage county government in 2010, while Walker was a candidate for governor. Repeatedly, Landgraf argued that Rindfleisch knowingly broke the law by doing campaign work at the courthouse. In a new development, the prosecutor made clear — without saying it was illegal — that top Walker campaign officials influenced, even directed, county strategy.

The John Doe investigation in Milwaukee has been Banquo's ghost flitting around Walker's political future almost from the moment that he was first elected in 2010. It is that most dangerous of all grand-jury investigations — patient, thorough, and damned near leakproof. (I was in Milwaukee last week and, while there was some chatter downtown about something big breaking in the case, nobody really knew what it was.) This case has been built slowly and methodically, and it is beginning to produce results in the way the most dangerous grand juries do – a little at a time, in a fashion whereby people higher up the food chain first become collateral damage in other cases, and then wind up in hip-deep in the fudge themselves.

Rindfleisch was the first real domino to drop. She widely was believed to be the liaison between Walker's campaign staff and the members of his campaign team, who were not supposed to be in contact at all. (This kind of thing may seem penny-ante to people in Louisiana, or up here in the Commonwealth — God save it! — but Wisconsin takes good-government principles very seriously, having invented most of them. The penalties for breaking those statutes are relatively draconian.) The e-mails presented by the prosecutors at her sentencing make her function pretty clear.

At another point, Rindfleisch said in an email regarding an effort by the campaign to plant stories about problems at the state Mendota Mental Health Institute: "This needs to be done covertly so it's not tied to Scott or the campaign in any way."

Using your official, taxpayer-funded office to catapult propaganda on behalf of the boss's campaign. Oh, the Wisconsin goo-goos are going to love that.

The Walker people are fobbing this off as much ado. "Walker campaign spokesman Tom Evenson said Monday the campaign and county staff were not doing anything improper. Evenson called their work "routine."

"It is not unusual for campaign staff and elected official's staff to routinely discuss the appropriate way to schedule meetings, determine a point of contact for emergencies, or how to address media inquiries directed at both the official office and the campaign office," Evenson said in a statement. "Balancing the daily calendars, meetings and issues covered by the media for an elected official present challenges in the course of a campaign that requires routine communication by both sets of staff."

Which leads, of course, to the inevitable question — if this is so routine, how come Kelly Rindfleisch is being hauled off to the sneezer for it?

This is not going to come to a quick and easy end. Rindfleisch is the fourth person to be convicted in connection with Walker's days as Milwaukee county commissioner. (Among the others is my personal favorite, Kevin Kavanaugh, who embezzled money meant to be spent taking the children of veterans killed in action to the zoo. Yes, he literally stole from widows and orphans.) It's plain at this point that the office was a snake pit of quasi-legal chicanery, and fully illegal machinations. The investigation continues, still thorough, still patient, still silent. Some day in the future, Scott Walker is going to wake up and wish very much that he were back in New Hampshire, listening to the cheers of strangers.

UPDATE — You have to say one thing. If he's going down, he'sgoing down swinging. There is absolutely no way this passes, even if Walker's not in the hoosegow.

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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