White
House hopeful Walker: Union battles prepared him to take on Islamic
State
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[February 27, 2015]
By Andy Sullivan
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. (Reuters) - Potential
Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker told grassroots
conservatives on Thursday that his battle with labor unions as
Wisconsin's governor had given him the mettle needed to take on militant
groups like Islamic State.
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""We need a leader who will stand up and say we will take the
fight to them and not wait until they take the fight to American
soil," Walker told the Conservative Political Action Conference
(CPAC).
"If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same in the rest
of the world," he added.
Democrats immediately seized on the comment to suggest Walker was
comparing Wisconsin protesters to Islamic militants.
"If Scott Walker thinks that it's appropriate to compare working
people speaking up for their rights to brutal terrorists, then he is
even less qualified to be president than I thought," said Democratic
National Committee spokesman Mo Elleithee.
Walker spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski said Walker was in no way
comparing any American citizen to Islamic State militants.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2015/Feb/27/images/ads/current/edward_jones_sda_pollice.png) "What the governor was saying was when faced with adversity he
chooses strength and leadership. Those are the qualities we need to
fix the leadership void this White House has created," she said.
The Badger State's 47-year-old governor has emerged as an early
favorite in the battle to win the Republican nomination in the
November 2016 presidential election. He was among more than a dozen
potential candidates due to address activists at CPAC in Maryland
near Washington on Thursday and Friday.
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Like many other potential candidates, Walker has argued that
Democratic President Barack Obama has not been aggressive enough in
the U.S.-led fight against Islamic State and other extremist groups
in the Middle East.
Walker triggered weeks of bitter protests shortly after he took
office in 2011 when he pushed legislation that stripped
collective-bargaining rights for many public workers and cut their
benefits. He emerged as a national figure after surviving a recall
attempt the following year and was re-elected in the politically
competitive state last November.
Walker is expected to sign a bill currently making its way through
the Republican-controlled state legislature that would make
Wisconsin a "right to work" state, which would further erode labor
unions' strength in the industrial state by allowing workers to opt
out of paying union dues.
(Additional reporting by Emily Flitter and Steve Holland; Editing by
Jonathan Oatis and Ken Wills)
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