"The things I like about Walker (my front-runner so far) are his executive experience, his principles, and his guts and fighting spirit..."

"... as well as his success in a mostly-blue state such as Wisconsin countering whatever the left could throw at him. That is a formidable accomplishment," writes Neo-Neocon, comparing Scott Walker to Chris Christie. "His rhetoric and charisma, I suspect, leave quite a bit to be desired. But I don’t know how much they are lacking because I haven’t watched or listened to him speak all that much. I fear Walker will have too much of the blah-blah-blah factor, but I don’t know...."

Well, I sure have watched him and listened to him. A lot. I watched all the debates in the 2010 election and the 2011 recall election. He has a style that people outside of the Midwest might not get. But I'm thinking that we got such a rhetoric-and-charisma overload with Obama that people might find Walker's style refreshing and uplifting. Walker comes across as completely sincere and earnest. He's committed to his conservative principles, which is unnerving to those who'd like to shake him. He's unshakeable.


Now, Neo-Neocon faults Christie for his lack of solid conservative principles, but "the one thing Christie’s got that Walker doesn’t have is the fact that when Christie speaks he minimizes both the boring factor and the cringe factor, at least for me." She admits she likes Christie's manner of speaking because it's like what she heard around her when she was growing up. That is, the Midwest manner is unfamiliar. To her. Not to everyone. Obviously, Christie's manner isn't what most American's grew up with either. It's hard to judge what other people will think of a guy whom you like because he sounds like a lot of other people you know and enjoy.

Actually, I didn't grow up in the Midwest. I've been here in Madison, Wisconsin since 1984, but I spent my young years in the mid-Atlantic region: northern Delaware (1951-1964), northern and southern New Jersey (1964-1973), and New York City (1973-1984) (with college time in Ann Arbor, Michigan). I'm in as good a position as anybody to feel that I get the regional stylings of both Walker and Christie. But I don't care as much as most people do about whether a politician is thrilling me with his talk. If I picked Christie over Walker, it would be because he's more flexible and less conservative. If I picked Walker over Christie, it would be because I liked the firm principles.