The Donald towers in crucial state of Iowa

When Republican Scott Walker arrives Monday at Iowa’s state fair, he’ll land in an unfamiliar position: he won’t be the front-runner in the state that holds the first presidential nominating contest.

Like most every other candidate in the historically crowded field, the Wisconsin governor’s standing in state and national polls has been hurt by the summer surge of billionaire Donald Trump, the party’s front-runner.

No state is more critical to Walker’s future than Iowa, where media expectations about his candidacy have grown to the point that anything short of a win in the Feb. 1 caucuses is likely to be viewed as a serious momentum killer.

The governor, who has enjoyed a consistent lead all year in Iowa, dropped to third in the most recent CNN poll.

He was backed by just 9 percent of likely caucus participants, below Trump at 22 percent and Carson at 14 percent.

It’s a dramatic fall for a guy who led in a Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll with 17 percent as recently as late May. That was approaching the level of support—roughly 20 percent—that most party insiders agree could win the caucuses in a 17-candidate field.

Walker is the man with the most to lose from Trump’s Iowa rise because he’s counting on a win in the state to provide momentum in subsequent contests where Trump and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush are almost certain to be better financed.

Walker hasn’t just lost his standing in Iowa polls. After the first Republican presidential debate on Aug. 6, he’s also lost traction in national polls.

Source: Bloomberg

‘Nightmare’ for US governor’s aide

Scott Walker
Scott Walker

Wisconsin Governor and potential 2016 GOP contender Scott Walker has many enemies on the left.

THE NIGHTMARE, reproduced in full below, was forwarded in 2010 by Thomas Nardelli, who was Walker’s chief-of-staff when he served as Milwaukee County Executive, to an undisclosed number of recipients, including Walker’s deputy chief-of-staff, Kelly Rindfleisch. Walker, who was elected governor later that year, went on to earn national notoriety for passing legislation aimed at dismantling the political power of Wisconsin’s public-sector unions. Nardelli became a full-time consultant.

Nardelli isn’t the only Walker official in trouble. The Republican fired his deputy finance director in December after the aide’s two-year-old tweets, one of which read, “I will choke that illegal mex cleaning in the library”, came to light.

Here’s the email:

THE NIGHTMARE

In the nightmare I found myself nude in bed, and I was looking at a mirror on the ceiling, and I discovered that I am a Negro, and I’m circumcised!

Quickly I sat up, found my pants and looked in the pockets to find my driver’s license photo and it was that same color, black.

I felt myself being very depressed, downcast, sitting in a chair.

But it’s a wheelchair! That means, of course, besides being black and Jewish, I’m also disabled! I said to myself, aloud “This is impossible! It’s impossible that I should be black and Jewish and disabled!” “It’s the pure and holy truth,” whispers someone from behind me. I turn around, and it’s my boyfriend.

Just what I needed!!! I am a homosexual, and on top of that, with a Mexican boyfriend.

Oh, my God …. Black, Jewish, disabled, gay with a Mexican boyfriend, drug addict, and HIV-positive!!!

Desperate, I begin to shout, cry, pull my hair, and Oh, nooooo…I’m bald!!!

The telephone rings. it’s my brother. He is saying, ‘Since mom and dad died, the only thing you do is hang out, take drugs, and laze around all day doing nothing. Get a job, you worthless piece of crap… Any job!’

Mom? Dad? Nooooo … Now I’m also an unemployed orphan! I try to explain to my brother how hard it is to find a job when you are black, Jewish, disabled, gay with a Mexican boyfriend, are a drug addict, HIV positive, bald, and an orphan, but he doesn’t get it.

Frustrated, I hang up. It’s then I realize I only have one hand!!! With tears in my eyes, I go to the window to look out. I see I live in a shanty-town full of cardboard and tin houses! There is trash everywhere.

Suddenly I feel a sharp pain near my pacemaker…. Pacemaker??

Besides being black, Jewish, disabled, a fairy with a Mexican boyfriend, a drug addict, HIV positive, bald, orphaned, unemployed, an invalid with one hand, and having a bad heart, I live in a crappy neighborhood.

At that very moment my boyfriend approaches and says to me, ‘Sweetie pie, my love, my little black heartthrob, have you decided what you are going to wear to Washington to see Obama?’

Say it isn’t so!!! I can handle being a black, disabled, one-armed, drug-addicted, Jewish homosexual on a pacemaker who is HIV positive, bald, orphaned, unemployed, lives in a slum, and has a Mexican boyfriend, but please, Oh dear God, please don’t tell me I’m a Democrat!