Why Scott Walker Said Something Batsh%$ Insane………

At CPAC, Scott Walker implied that union activists and the terrorist group ISIS are equivalent:

At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker drew a comparison between Islamic State militants and the Wisconsin union protesters with whom he has repeatedly clashed since 2011.

In response to a question about how he would deal with global threats such as the one posed by ISIS, Walker drew from his personal experience.

"If I can take on a 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world," Walker said on the CPAC stage, after giving a longer answer about how he would handle ISIS if he were the president.

Rather unsurprisingly, Democratic firebrand Senator condemned the comments.

Rather more surprising is the fact that he was condemned on the (web) pages of the reactionary mouthpiece The National Review:

But former Texas Gov. Rick Perry quickly criticized Walker’s remarks. And NRO’s Jim Geraghty was appalled:

That is a terrible response. First, taking on a bunch of protesters is not comparably difficult to taking on a Caliphate with sympathizers and terrorists around the globe, and saying so suggests Walker doesn’t quite understand the complexity of the challenge from ISIS and its allied groups.

Secondly, it is insulting to the protesters, a group I take no pleasure in defending. The protesters in Wisconsin, so furiously angry over Walker’s reforms and disruptive to the procedures of passing laws, earned plenty of legitimate criticism. But they’re not ISIS. They’re not beheading innocent people. They’re Americans, and as much as we may find their ideas, worldview, and perspective spectacularly wrongheaded, they don’t deserve to be compared to murderous terrorists.

No one should be shocked by Walker's statement.  Statements like this are a required part of running for office as a Republican, particularly for Presidential candidates.

There is a cultural imperative among Republicans to troll liberals/Democrats.

When a Republican candidate says something that makes non-Republican heads explode, it is seen as an independent good by the base.

The issue these days is that each time a Republican tries to make liberal heads explode, the bar keeps getting moved further down the road toward "to crazy even for Republicans", and these days the line is pretty narrow.

It's stupid, it's immature, and it is exceedingly juvenile, but that is today's Republican party in a nut shell.