Scott Walker is Out of Mitt’s Shadow—But Staying In the Spotlight Is A Challenge

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was the breakout star of last weekend’s Iowa Faith and Freedom Summit, elbowing aside bigger names like Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush to seize the 2016 Republican presidential spotlight. Walker had hoped to keep the spotlight by delivering a big speech in Washington on Friday. Instead, Romney seized it back.

When he took the podium at the American Action Forum, Walker chose not to acknowledge the news that Romney, a major rival for the nomination, had bowed out of the race. Instead, he sketched out for the audience at the conservative think tank his vision of what post-Romney Republican politics might look like. Spoiler alert: It looks a lot like the old politics, but with a different guy at the top of the ticket. Walker touted a Wisconsin-centric, meat-and-potatoes, small-government conservatism garnished with a heaping portion of scorn for Washington, D.C. “As much as I love coming here, I love going home even more,” Walker said, calling Washington “68 square miles surrounded by reality.”