Scott Walker has ended his bid to be president, leaving a mere 15 hopefuls for the Republican nomination. Bryon York of the Washington Examiner offers up an analysis of why Walker’s bid came up well short, arguing that he just wasn’t ready for prime time, that while a master of the issues Wisconsin faced, he just wasn’t up on national and international issues:
Many Republicans will view [Scott] Walker’s departure with real regret. It is hard to overstate how much conservatives respected him for his fight against the public employee unions in Wisconsin. He stood up to everything the Democratic-Big Labor-Liberal Establishment had to throw at him, and came out the winner. That took enormous strength and resolve. If anything qualified a Republican for a shot at the White House, that was it.
But for all this strengths at the state level, Walker just wasn’t ready for a national run. And in the end, the presidential campaign did what presidential campaigns do: it ruthlessly exposed the weakness of the man at the top.