Scott Walker is the new flavor of the week, the new dish on the Republican menu. He brought crowds to their feet in Iowa over the weekend and placed first in an important regional poll to identify favorites for 2016.
For someone derided by the smart guys as dull and unexciting, the governor of Wisconsin is suddenly the flash and splash of midwinter. Such flash and splash, synthetic by definition, is usually the work of pundits dulled by the lethargy of January, the most useless of the months, eager to find something “new and entirely different.”
But January ennui (pundits suffering lassitude of their own always often throw in something French in the third paragraph) sometimes uncovers the real thing, and Mr. Walker looks like authentic. Voters, both Republican and Democrat, seem to be bored with the pale and stale, the old and not so bold. Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee and the gang, worthies all, are from a movie sent from Netflix. Hillary Clinton, the freshest face the Democrats can find, only reminds everyone of scandals, some more sordid than others, from the previous century.