As part of a nearly $250,000 ad buy, Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign released on Friday a television ad linking Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke to former Gov. Jim Doyle, under whom she served as Commerce secretary from 2005 to 2007.
With Doyle and Burke represented in a deck of playing cards, a narrator reads: “When Jim Doyle was governor and Mary Burke was Commerce secretary, they gambled taxpayer money on dreadful policies. Like billions in middle-class tax hikes on nursing home beds, gas, phones and garbage.”
During an appearance on “UpFront with Mike Gousha” on Sunday, Burke defended her time serving as the state’s Commerce Secretary, while also using the opportunity to go on the offensive against Gov. Walker with an absolutely pitch-perfect response.
“It seems like Scott Walker wishes he was running against Jim Doyle and not Mary Burke,” Burke said. “I am a very different candidate, a business executive with actual experience balancing budgets, creating jobs, meeting payroll, starting my own business.
“I’m a very different person than Jim Doyle was. I am very proud of the years that I served the people of the state of Wisconsin as Commerce secretary, but out of a 30-year career, the two years that I spent as Commerce secretary are a very small portion of what I bring to the table as governor.”
I find it ironic (not to mention more than a little delightful) that Gov. Walker has such an atrocious record on job creation that he feels the need to attack the record of a man who hasn’t held office in nearly four years and who isn’t his opponent in the current election.
Then again, if I were Scott Walker, I’d be pretty desperate to find anything to distract from my abysmal record too.
Probably the same reason why President Obama still blames President Bush for the economy, Iraq, etc.
It’s just convenient.
The obvious answer is that Walker never had to deal with Bush as president, so his job was much easier than Doyle’s (hey-oh!)
In all seriousness, we were noticeably worse off due to Bush and had a major hole to dig out if, while Jim Doyle’s last year in office had the state growing jobs at a faster rate than ANY of Walker’s 3 years. In fact, Walker’s performance in office has been so bad it makes a lot of people wish for the “good old days” of Doyle. I don’t see anyone with an IQ over 15 wanting Bushie back.