Scott Walker Pulls Out of Race
On Monday, September 21st, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker pulled out of the 2016 GOP nomination.
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| Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker |
“Today I believe that I am being called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so a positive conservative message can rise to the top of the field,” he stated to the public (BBC).
I believe that it is important to note that Walker had topped the field at one point, yet his number of supporters eventually began to dwindle due to his inconsistent view on key issues. Recognizing his falling popularity, donors began pulling out of his campaign causing him to struggle to raise money and to finally drop out of the race.
Walker's statement to the public seems to have an underlying message as he subtly pushes for a new candidate to rise up over current top candidate, Donald Trump. Further hinting, he stated, “sadly, the debate taking place in the Republican Party today is not focused on that optimistic view of America. Instead, it has drifted into personal attacks” (Vox). (These “personal attacks” he references to are the ones explicitly made by Trump towards women, wives, and other candidates.)
Do you believe money should play as big of a role as it does in current political campaigns? Is it fair for a candidate to be able to fund himself for campaign expenditures, while most must go through the process of securing funds from private donors in order to campaign? Are there benefits to having a candidate who is able to self-fund?
Sources:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34317758
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/21/9366545/scott-walker-quits-race
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/21/us-usa-election-walker-idUSKCN0RL28M20150921
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/21/politics/scott-walker-drops-out-republican-donors/
2 comments:
In my opinion, we should have a constitutional amendment to make sure that we do not have such flow of money in politics. 91% of the time, the candidate with the most amount of money wins in an election. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/04/think-money-doesnt-matter-in-elections-this-chart-says-youre-wrong/
What I would most definitely be in favor of is a system of public finance and small donations and not allowing candidates to use personal wealth as a way to spread ideas. Unfortunately, in the Citizens United case, the SCOTUS decided that money equals speech, thus leading to our massive problems today. Of course we have had money in politics as an issue in the past but this Supreme Court case was probably unprecedented with what it allowed for. It's the disasterous case that also deemd the McCain-Fiengold Act as unconstitutional. http://www.salon.com/2012/10/25/people_really_hate_citizens_united/
But with the matter of Scott Walker, I'm glad he's out of the race. He was a terrible governor in Wisconsin since one of his central positions was to bust up the unions. For some reason, conservatives in this country seem to think that unions have all the power when in fact only 11% of Americans are in unions and workers rights have not budged.
I agree in principle with Steven that candidates with private (self) funding has an unfair advantage. They can use their money to buy more public channels to communicate such as more air time on TV, magazine ads, primetime shows, speaking engagements, as well as other avenues such as social media. They will be able to inundate the uninformed public with their message. This is not a level playing field as far as campaigning goes. I believe campaign funding should be tightly regulated. The amount of money allocated as campaign funds should be limited per contribution. The larger amount of fund should indicate candidates' ability to garner support to begin with, both with public as well as private sectors. This way, candidates with more money simply mean that they are more able to garner grass-rooted support for their campaign to begin with.
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