There’s been little said about it lately, but the question is important — will Scott Walker run for re-election in 2008?

My guess is the answer is yes.

But the question now is where will he raise funds? Rumor has it that the business community is turning on him, recognizing that you can only use the anti-tax rhetoric so long before you start destroying the community and valued services. If the business community has turned or is starting to turn on him, where will he raise all the campaign cash he’s known for scarfing up?

It’s safe to say the answer to that question is Waukesha County. Where else can you find a large population which is more affluent than Milwaukee County that looks down their noses at Milwaukee County? Walker’s entire political career has been spent dividing urban and suburban, rich against poor, influential against disenfranchised.

But where else can Scott Walker go and have nearly a million people under his watch? What other job can this college dropout go to that would allow him, a man with no marketable skills and no real private sector experience, to make 6 figures? What other job would allow Walker the ability to go to national Republican events and tell all his Republican cronies that he runs a traditionally Democratic county?

No where. There is no other job that’s open. He ran for Governor and got smoked in the run up to the primary only to bail out last minute. What’s the guy to do?

Where else but in the Milwaukee County courthouse, can he say he has as much power as he currently does? No where.

But then there’s the question of the job. Oh yeah, the job.

The Milwaukee County Executive has traditionally put together budgets that were actually balanced to a certain extent. Yes, there have been execs in the past that have used phantom revenues, but Walker has set the bar for underfunded budgets. If Walker were a baseball player he would be batting about .100 which even in baseball would mean he would be sent down to the minors.

Take the transit system for instance. Walker says he opposes light rail but why? Republican talk radio tells him to oppose light rail. Therefore he does. Who elected him? Well it would be accurate to say that talk radio, the same crew which loves George W. Bush despite his horrible poll numbers, played a major role in getting Walker elected. Without them he would still be a fairly irrelevant State Assemblyman from Wauwatosa who was known for sending out a press release daily and having an opinion on everything regardless of whether he had any purview over it or not. After all, did anyone really care that a white republican suburbanite named Scott Walker opposed the million man march? Back then he was the laughing stock of newsrooms. Who’s laughing now?

With Walker, image is everything and to him, any event is fair game to try to build his empire. Take the case of the wake of Mattibelle Woods. Mattibelle was over 100 when she died. A civil rights leader, and active member of the Democratic Party, Woods opposed everything that Walker was doing in politics. Walker knew she was popular within the African American community so he used her death to attempt to make inroads with people of color. After he shook the hands of the relatives of Mattibelle, he parked himself at the end of the receiving line as though he was family. He proceeded to attempt to shake every persons hand who walked by. That’s how shameless this man is.

When it comes to policy matters, Walker has been strong on rhetoric but weak on substance. ‘Cut, cut, cut’ has been his mantra and unfortunately it shows. Deferred maintenance and underfunded operating budgets have meant that Milwaukee County is starting to fall apart. It’s really quite pitiful. Even the halls of that gorgeous building — the courthouse owned by the people, not the politicians, has been left to collect dirt and dust.

Walker has come under criticism as of late and has laid low for the most part — sensing that right-wing republicans like himself are not Mr. Popularity these days. As the public sees services slashed and their parks neglected, they’re reminded that they very well may have made a terrible mistake.