Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin whose star is rising among contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, on Sunday said he did not, as was widely reported this week, compare supporters of organised labour in his home state to Islamist militants abroad.
He also conceded that President Obama may after all love his country, and said he had changed his mind over the desirability of a path to citizenship for undocumented migrants.
In his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday, discussing his foreign policy credentials, Walker referred to his increasingly famous confrontation with protesters in Wisconsin in 2011-12, in which he passed a controversial “right-to-work” law and then won a recall election.
He said: “If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world.”
The remark attracted widespread criticism. On Sunday, asked by Fox News host Chris Wallace “isn’t there a big difference between protesters and terrorists”, he said: “I want to make it clear right now. I’m not comparing those two entities. What I meant was, it was about leadership.
“The leadership we provided under extremely difficult circumstances, arguably the most difficult of any governor in the country, maybe in recent times. To me, I apply that to say, if I were to run and if I were to win and be commander-in-chief, I believe that kind of leadership is what’s necessary to take on radical Islamic terrorism.”
Labour representatives in Wisconsin have also questioned Walker’s account of the confrontation inside the state capitol, especially as expressed in Unintimidated, his book that was published last year.
In the book, Walker wrote of how “anyone in a suit was assumed to be a Republican and accosted”, and added: “The capitol grew so packed with human bodies, the staff who worked there physically could not move around the building. There was no possible way to clean it because the bodies never left. The smell, as soon as you walked into the building, was overpowering.”
On Friday John Matthews, executive director of Madison Teachers Inc, told the Guardian: “The occupation was extremely peaceful. The people who took part in them cleared up the refuse every day. If anyone was seen to be getting emotional then people would calm them down, and tell them we were there not to make trouble but to make a point.”
On Sunday, Walker also switched course on immigration and Barack Obama’s love for his country.
On immigration, the governor answered questions over a 2013 interview with a Wisconsin newspaper in which he said eventual citizenship for the 11 million undocumented migrants in US “makes sense”.
“I don’t believe in amnesty,” he told Fox. “My view has changed. I’m flat out saying it. Candidates can say that.”
Last month, after contentious attacks on the president by the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani which other 2016 hopefuls swiftly disowned, Walker repeatedly declined to say whether he believed Obama loved his country.
He also said he “didn’t know” if the president was a Christian. Such evasions – including a refusal while in London to say whether he believed in evolution or not – were seen by some as dog whistles to the Republicans’ conservative base, to which candidates must appeal in the primary elections that decide the presidential nominee.
However Walker told Fox, a source very much in touch with the GOP base, that Obama or “anybody else who is willing to put their name on the ballot certainly has to have the love for country to do that”.
Walker’s appearance came a day after he finished second in the CPAC presidential straw poll, attracting 21.4% of 3,007 votes cast. The winner, Kentucky senator Rand Paul, took 25.7% of the vote for a third straight straw poll victory.
Analysts, however, pointed out that with Paul earning most of his support from a younger, more libertarian element of CPAC attendees, Walker’s runners-up spot actually indicated victory among traditional, hard-line conservatives.
