Can someone truly, kindly explain what’s going in the Republican Party?

If some of these candidates get in power and do what they’re talking about, far from having a “conservative” government, it’s increasingly clear we’d have a radical government. Donald Trump’s signature suggestion is to build a wall at the U.S. Mexico border. Now his fellow Oval Office aspirant Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker thinks that building a wall at the CANADIAN border might be a legitimate idea.

It’s not just the southern border: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker says it’s “legitimate” to discuss building a wall separating the United States from Canada, as well.

The Republican presidential contender said the idea of a northern border has come up while he has campaigned in New Hampshire.

In an interview for NBC’s “Meet the Press” available online, Walker said his tough talk to securing the borders and enforcing U.S. laws extends to the 5,525-mile Canadian border as well.

It’s a shift from most campaign-trail rhetoric, which has focused on the United States’ border with Mexico, where millions undocumented immigrants have entered the country.

“Some people have asked us about that in New Hampshire,” Walker said. “They raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought that up to me at one of our town hall meetings about a week and a half ago. So that is a legitimate issue for us to look at.”

Terrorist attacks have been plotted in Canada — including the so-called “Millennium plot,” a foiled 2000 plan in which an Algerian national planned to cross into the United States from Canada and bomb the Los Angeles International Airport.

Walker has focused his immigration remarks on enforcing U.S. laws already on the books in recent weeks.

This kind of talk about building big, fat walls along the U.S. southern and northern borders would have been considered the kind of thing advocated by the nutcases who were on the old UHS shows relegated to 2 a.m. slots in the 1960s. Now the ideas are being advocated by (purportedly) serious people running for President. If you hear a rumbling sound tonight, it’s probably the sound of genuinely serious conservatives Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan turning over in their graves.

Increasingly, to those who aren’t fans of far-right talk radio, this is the song that comes to mind when you hear of someone not immediately shooting down the idea of building a wall along the U.S. Canadian border, with a dismissive wave of his hand, a laugh or a “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Walker’s lack of nimbleness in not rejecting the idea of a wall along the Canadian border fits in perfectly with this Washington Post story “What Happened to Scott Walker” that ran today amd started with this:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker surged into the top tier of the Republican presidential race with a fiery speech in the depths of winter in Iowa. But his candidacy has wilted in the heat of a summer dominated by Donald Trump, with loyalists and supporters now calling for an immediate mid-course correction.

Walker’s backers see a campaign discombobulated by Trump’s booming popularity and by his provocative language on immigration, China and other issues. They see in Walker a candidate who — in contrast to the discipline he showed in state races — continues to commit unforced errors, either out of lack of preparation or in an attempt to grab for part of the flamboyant businessman’s following.

These supporters say what is needed now is a return to basics, a more disciplined focus on the issues Walker long has championed in Wisconsin. They say there also needs to be a clear acknowledgment inside the campaign that the governor has yet to put to rest questions about his readiness to handle the problems and unexpected challenges that confront every president.

This latest news story on Walker won’t combat these increasingly negative perceptions.

SOME OTHER REACTION:
—Alexander Pannetta in Canada’s Globe and Mail:

Walker didn’t dwell on the issue. He quickly steered the conversation to the Middle East, rebuilding the military, and national security. The exchange about Canada never even made it to air, and was edited out of the interview highlights that ran on “Meet The Press” and was simply posted on NBC’s website.

The context for the conversation is the heated U.S. debate about the Mexican border. Occasionally, the debate will fleetingly touch upon the northern frontier.

On those rare occasions that the Canadian border does come up it’s likelier to be raised, as was the case Sunday, by political commentators than by the presidential candidates themselves.

That’s because the Canadian border makes a handy polemical tool — a pointy needle for pundits seeking to puncture the conservative logic on the other border.

A textbook example was a piece in Politico magazine last fall headlined, “Fear Canada: The real terrorist threat next door.” Its first 18 paragraphs were about Mexico. Before it even mentioned the word ”Canada,” it sought to demolish a Republican talking-point about ISIL terrorists supposedly sneaking across the Rio Grande.

That’s what Sunday’s exchange was about.

In a week when Walker himself raised the terrorists-from-the-south theme, and amid a Republican primary in which the poll-leader, Donald Trump, wants to deport 11 million illegal migrants and build what he calls the Great Wall of Trump, an interviewer asked: Why Mexico and not Canada?

It was the interviewer who twice raised the Canadian border. NBC host Chuck Todd challenged Walker to explain the focus on the south and, in doing so, he referenced terrorists coming from Canada.

Slantpoint:

He is a certified visionary. Because while Sarah Palin claimed she could see Russia from wherever, she forgot Canada had its beady eyes fixed on her–and she never even knew it!

But score one for Walker. He knows what the real danger is and where it’s coming from: Canada’s limitless supply of actors.

Think about it. They’ve been stealing American jobs for years without anyone paying any attention to their sneaky ways: Keanu Reeves, Neve Campbell, Kiefer Sutherland, Dan Akroyd, Pamela Anderson , William Shatner, Ellen Page, Seth Rogen, Michael J. Fox, Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds–the list goes painfully on.

That wall would end our national shame and make America truly safe and great again! Scott Wallker is a genius.

—Bearing Drift:

The parade of stupid continues within Republican ranks regarding the nation’s borders, with Scott Walker mentioning in his “Meet the Press” interview that the idea of erecting a wall along the 5,000+ mile border we share with Canada is a “legitimate issue.” Oh, and the Southern border is where the real trouble is, beefing up national security, we love our troops, etc.

But those Canadians…

–-Hit and Run:

That’s fine if you’re in Wisconsin, but who will be the first candidate to call for a coastal wall? Can the homeland truly be secure when any terrorist can wash up on our Atlantic and Pacific beaches? WHO WILL PROTECT US FROM THE ISIS SHARKS?

A nation surrounded by walls. That seems to be what some Republican presidential hopefuls think might help the United States become safer. On Sunday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said that building a wall along the U.S. border with Canada is a “legitimate issue for us to look at” and needs to be examined further.

To be fair, Walker only brought up the issue because NBC’s Chuck Todd asked him “why are we always talking about the southern border?” But the governor said it was not the first time he had heard about the issue. Law enforcement officials in New Hampshire brought it up as a concern during a recent town hall meeting, Walker said.

A potential problem with this idea? The sheer massiveness of the northern border. While the U.S. has 1,989 miles of border with Mexico, the border with Canada is 5,525 miles long, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Photo “Governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker 11 (cropped)” by Michael Vadon – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Governor_of_Wisconsin_Scott_Walker_11_(cropped).jpg#/media/File:Governor_of_Wisconsin_Scott_Walker_11_(cropped).jpg

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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