Scott Walker Looks to Torpedo Iran Deal and Obamacare If He Wins

Remember Scott Walker? He’s the Wisconsin governor who launched his career as top banana by sharply curtailing the collective bargaining powers of the state’s public workers, effectively hobbling the labor movement there. Now he’s setting his sights on the White House.

It should come as no surprise that many of the changes President Obama has brought about during his tenure haven’t sat well with Walker. And as The Guardian relayed Thursday, in the event that Walker should claim Obama’s seat in the 2016 election, the Republican upstart already knows which aspects of Obama’s legacy and legislation he’d like to strike down. He gave fair warning at a lobbyists’ power huddle that day:

Walker laid out an ambitious conservative agenda in a keynote address to the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), one of the nation’s most controversial and powerful lobbying networks, in San Diego.

He promised to curb organised labour, slash taxes and regulations, and inject Ronald Reagan-style “steel” into US foreign policy, saying Islamic extremism, not climate change, was the leading security threat.

“We fight to win,” he said. “The rest of the world must know there is no greater friend and no worse enemy than the United States of America.”

The governor, a leading contender in a crowded GOP field, made numerous references to his religious faith and boasted of defunding Planned Parenthood, drawing cheers from the audience of legislators and lobbyists.

Walker, who has close ties to the lobbying network, also won applause vowing to dismantle the administration’s Iran deal – a deal secretary of state John Kerry and other senior officials were concurrently trying to sell on Capitol Hill.

Walker also told the sympathetic crowd that the Affordable Care Act’s days would be numbered if he were put in charge. First, though, he’ll have to climb over Donald Trump.

–Posted by Kasia Anderson