THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Because the Evil Koch Owned Homunculus Scott Walker has adopted a stand of never letting anyone push him from his carefully crafted positions. The result is a "Sgt. Schultz" response to questions outside his comfort zone.

Mr. Walker has won three statewide elections by framing positions on his own terms, and rarely allowing himself to be pushed off his talking points.

“He’s deeply suspicious of a press trying to pull him into an area where he doesn’t want to go,” said John Sharpless, a former Republican congressional candidate in Wisconsin.

The question now as Mr. Walker has vaulted to the top tier of the Republican Party’s potential presidential candidates is whether his consistency is a form of message discipline, or an inflexibility that hides an awkwardness when forced to react under pressure and on his feet.

A presidential campaign is a nonstop barrage of questioning from reporters, debate moderators and voters. Perceived slip-ups are magnified and distorted. When Mr. Walker visited London recently and said he would “punt” when asked if he believed in evolution, it was international news. After he refused to condemn Rudolph W. Giuliani’s claim that the president does not love America, made at a dinner Mr. Walker attended, the flap metastasized and followed Mr. Walker for days.

“In the scheme of things, these are all misdemeanors in media management,” said Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review. “If he stumbles on more important stuff, the cut has been created where the media can open more of a wound and say there’s a narrative here, the guy’s not ready for prime time.”

So far the attention, and the impression among conservatives that Mr. Walker is being hounded by the mainstream media, has only played to his benefit. His support jumped to 25 percent in a Quinnipiac University poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers released Wednesday, more than twice as high as his closest rival.

In Wisconsin, opponents have learned through unhappy experience not to underestimate Mr. Walker’s ability to respond to unwelcome questions by pivoting back to his core issues of limited government, personal freedom and the harm of unions, all of which have resonated with voters.

As slippery as goose shit, as dishonest as Karl Rove and very well financed. Scott Walker is the turd that floats to the top if we let him.