Unaccountable Scott Walker passes the buck on job numbers...to Syria

Gov. Walker once again places blame for dismal numbers somewhere else, but not himself

Gov. Scott Walker is retreating on his pledge to create 250,000 jobs in Wisconsin before his first (and hopefully only) term is out.

But he’s not doing it by altering his pledge, or even acknowledging that he couldn’t reach it.

Rather, he’s counting on you to forget about it altogether, hoping you won’t be smart enough to remember that he once said 250,000 was his base goal:

I’ve said all along that 250,000 is my floor, not my ceiling. I think it’s at least 250,000 jobs...

That was then-candidate Scott Walker in 2010. But now, Gov. Walker is singing a different tune:

[Walker] has less than a year and a half to create nearly 170,000 jobs to keep that pledge.

On Monday in Merrill, he carefully backed away from the specific number.

“My goal wasn’t so much to hit a magic number as much as it was, in the four years before I took office, when I was campaigning, I saw that we lost over 133,000 jobs in the state. I said, ‘it’s really not about jobs, it’s about real people, real jobs like those here, and more importantly, affecting real families all across the state,’” Walker said.

Emphases added.

In other words, Walker is re-writing history, and he’s hoping your memory is short enough not to notice it.

He didn’t stop there, though. Walker also made it clear he felt that it STILL wasn’t his fault that jobs were slowing down.

Having previously blamed Obamacare, the debt ceiling, protesters, the recall, rain (yes, really, the rain), the presidential election, and unskilled workers, Gov. Walker is now implying that the unrest in Syria is the latest thing he can blame when it comes to slower job growth in Wisconsin.

That’s right: it's Syria's fault for our unremarkable job numbers now.

“The President, working with other leaders on a global basis, can try and put some pressure on to get things under control in the Middle East and provide stability there, because that will help our economy and if they don’t it has an impact,” Gov. Walker said. “We can do all the good possible, we can get the state back on the right track, but if there’s instability around the world it will inevitably have an impact.”

Emphases added.

Walker is spinning whatever news headlines he can find hoping to apply them to Wisconsin’s jobs -- so long as he can use those headlines to divert blame away from him. But we shouldn’t buy it, and Democratic Rep. Peter Barca said it best  in a tweet he made earlier today:

Indeed, as Barca states so eloquently (in under 140 characters, mind you), the national rate at which jobs are growing is much stronger than the Wisconsin rate under Gov. Walker. In fact, Walker’s rate of growth, in both of the two years where data is available, is slower than his predecessor’s last year in office.

Gov. Scott Walker is showing his true colors when he places blame elsewhere. A real leader knows when to accept blame and when outside events are actually influencing the situation at hand. Walker, however, fails to accept any accountability, choosing instead to blame everything he can in order to save face.

Don’t be surprised if the kitchen sink is the next item on his list...