On Monday, the Associated Press’ Scott Bauer blasted Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s new book, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge, by fibbing repeatedly about Walker’s record and criticizing Walker for not writing about matters that Bauer would prefer him to tackle. Bauer suggests, “Gov. Scott Walker’s new book isn’t exactly a tell-all. In fact, it glosses over or just leaves out many pieces in the story related to Walker’s successful drive to take power away from public unions and the subsequent recall battle.”
What, exactly, does Walker leave out? According to Bauer, “Walker promised in his 2010 election campaign that after four years with him as governor the state would add 250,000 private sector jobs…. Walker never mentions his jobs creation promise in the book. Instead, the book focuses on how many jobs the state lost prior to his taking office and how Walker argued during the recall that monthly job-collection data being used against him was inaccurate.”
This is a ridiculous criticism, given that President Obama has never referred back to his promises to dramatically lower unemployment rates in 2008. And Walker does state in the book that the fight for Wisconsin’s freedom of labor meant dedicating time and resources that would have been used to fight unemployment, had unions not determined to maintain their prized negotiating status (p. 15: “The protests had eaten up a good month of our time, and I was eager to get back to my number one priority: helping the people of Wisconsin create more jobs”).
Next, Bauer suggests that Walker is in the wrong for not discussing a John Doe investigation ongoing during the recall effort, in which “Six people, including three of Walker’s former aides, an appointee and a major campaign contributor, were convicted of criminal charges…” Except that Walker does discuss the case (p. 185), and gave his chief of staff permission to investigate the case, which cleared Walker of all wrongdoing, a fact Bauer conveniently ignores.
Bauer then says that Walker somehow ignored the recall effort by not touting the efforts of his enemies – another insipid criticism. He also faults Walker for not complimenting protesters against him (“Walker fails to report…that the protests, which grew to as large as 100,000 people and would be intense for over a month, went off without major incidents”), not praising those gathering signatures against him (“Petition circulators…exceed[ed] nearly everyone’s expectations”), and not talking about his comments that by tackling public employee unions he was pursuing a strategy of “divide and conquer.” It is, of course, not Walker’s job to write a paean to his opposition. And Bauer conveniently ignores that the protesters cost Wisconsin millions (p. 206): nearly $270,000 for cleanup, over $7.8 million for law enforcement, $2.1 million for the senate recall, and another $14 million for the 2012 recall election.
Bauer’s dishonest review is yet another example of the media attempting to bury Gov. Walker – an attempt they made consistently throughout the 2011-2012 union controversy. They apparently have no ideas about slowing their mission to stop Walker and his agenda for Wisconsin.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
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