At last week's Iowa Ag Summit, rumored presidential candidate and confirmed smarmy weathervane Scott Walker wowed Republicans with faux-sincerity and triangulated tales of the Heartland. Walker appealed to folks by trumpeting Wisconsin's efforts to improve healthcare in remote areas. A true friend of Real America, Scott noted how he expanded medical treatment beyond home remedies such as Aunt Francine's Giblet Poultice.

"We invested not only more money in rural health care, we put more money in to train primary care physicians and other health care assistants. And then we put money in our hospitals to help do residencies, so that we weren’t just training — we were actually getting physicians to do their residencies at rural hospitals," Walker said at the Ag Summit on March 7.

It's interesting that Candidate Walker is speaking in the past tense since Governor Walker's proposed 2015-2017 budget (released prior to the event) makes no wistful reference to the residency programs that bring young doctors to the esteemed Americans on the front lines of our dairy supply. In fact, Governor Walker's budget entirely deletes the program along with other loan assistance programs for health care professionals working in under-served areas.

This is a tiny bump on a bigger pickle for Governor Walker. Despite getting fiscally blasted by a projected $2 billion deficit while concurrently getting destroyed in virtually every major economic category by Minnesota, the socialist hellhole to the west, Gov. Walker just can't quit his tax cuts for corporations and deep-pocketed campaign financiers. So he'll just siphon a few million from rural health care, another few hundred million from public education, and who knows? Maybe he can cook the books and play out the string until some arbitrary date, say November 2016. Meanwhile, Candidate Walker can just cherry pick any old narrative that pleases the people.

But until then, how can we tell the difference between the two Walkers? Is there a Hackhack that can help us decipher the elected dick from the campaigning schlub? Well...

Governor Walker wears a suit. Candidate Walker wears a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, ready for any odd job in stone's throw of a camera. Governor Walker loathes ethanol mandates. Candidate Walker loves you Iowa! them. Governor Walker’s staff emails stale racist jokes from a simpler and stupider time. Candidate Walker’s staff tweets about how Iowans are total rubes. And we're not sure if the two men have been photographed in the same place at one time.

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So while Governor Walker pretends to deal with public health advocates asking the GOP to reconsider the program cuts, Candidate Walker doesn't really give a shit since Wisconsin's primary isn't until late in the 2016 game. Plus, if Scott Walker is willing to single-handedly destroy his home state's infrastructure, just think about the wrath he's preparing to rain down on ISIS and their shop stewards.

Yet in the end, one might wonder why Candidate Walker would even deign to tout the rural health care program, a bill that was signed into law by his predecessor, Democratic governor Jim Doyle. Walker is beginning to steamroll his raggedy GOP opponents not because of the effectiveness of government programs, but because of his strongly delivered tales of using his furrowed brow to thwart the creeping Sharia of Union infidels. Do GOP voters really care about medical treatment for people in the sticks, or do they just want to hear a candidate spew bullshit about touching Reagan’s Bible with a limp hand withered by a career in government? Besides, isn't this just the type of stupid lie that the Gipper would’ve loved?

Dearest Iowa, Scott Walker is ready to caress your ears with all of the sweetest sounds of a pasty, workshopped pander machine.  And as for Wisconsin? Molotov, suckers.

[Cap Times]