The blogosphere and the punditocracy are now seriously considering the potential candidacy of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker as the GOP’s 2016 standard-bearer. This is a long time in coming, of course; Walker has already run and won three statewide elections as a conservative in Wisconsin, he has a record of achievement not just in making a difference in the political direction of a blue state but also in creating real results for the people he governs, he’s a no-nonsense, unapologetic man of principle and, over the weekend at the Iowa Freedom Summit, Walker showed he’s a communicator on the order of the Party’s top tier.

Walker’s speech brought the house down at the Citizens United event. It was the right mix of red meat for the crowd and common-sense politicking folks not in the conservative base can handle. The video…

The media has focused almost completely on the stale potential candidacy of Mitt Romney or the even more stale potential candidacy of Jeb Bush, when it’s pretty clear that the Republican electoral base isn’t the slightest bit excited about either one. That’s why various polls will show Walker with movement, or Marco Rubio, or Rand Paul or Ted Cruz. The party’s base isn’t interested in another candidate fueled and controlled by Wall Street and corporate money, and it’s going to demand its stamp on the nominee.

That’s why Walker, even if he’s going to run behind Romney or Bush in the money race early on, could well win this thing.

The history of the GOP primaries has for a long time been that moderate establishment candidates would compete with each other to be acceptable to the base, and increasingly the base feels the need to hold its nose in the general election as those moderates run flaccid campaigns against Democrats. But in 2016, the reverse is likely. In 2016, it’s going to be the conservatives who compete for the establishment’s acceptance, and the winner will run a bolder campaign against the other side than we’ve seen since Reagan.

Walker, whose image drives the Left so insane that the socialist Irish punk band The Dropkick Murphy’s, whose song “Shipping Up To Boston” he used as his walk-out music in Iowa, tweeted their actual hatred of him in response to his using their song (something Walker did for the express purpose of driving them insane given that they recorded a song to support the recall effort against him), is such a man. That he has a record of successful governance to go with that image makes him a very interesting 2016 hopeful.