The controversial governor was in our area over the weekend.
Photo: Getty Images
Governor Scott Walker is the only U.S. governor to survive a recall election. In fact, he received more votes during the recall than he did during his general election.
While in South Florida for the weekend for the Republican National Committee's quarterly meeting, we aksed him several questions:
Can the GOP come back after the 2012 election? He says yes.
"There's no doubt about it, but we've gotta change things. Part of it is just the way we communicate our message. We need to be more optimistic. We need to be more relevant to where people are in their lives and we need to show we have the courage to act on those beliefs."
Will he Run for President in 2016?
"I feel like I'm committed now to Governor. Who knows what the future will hold but there are some great names, Senator Rubio being one, Paul Ryan, another Wisconsinite being another and a whole slew of great governors out there who would make good prospects, but we'll see."
A potential texting and driving ban is making its way through the Florida legislature. What's going on in Wisconsin with regard to that?
"I'm not one of those who are not looking for new ways to add new laws, but in our state what we do is law enforcement agressively uses the inattentive driving statute that's already on the books to target people who are texting while driving and causing problems." Walker says his state has a ban on teens texting and driving.
Governor Rick Scott wants to expand medicaid to roughly a million residents. Governor Walker says he declined it in his state.
"They acknowledge that they have a deficit problem. They have an ongoing growing debt problem. It's hard to imagine that if they can't handle those issues, how they're going to take on all this new cost for medicaid expansion across the country, which is why we didn't take it and we found a way to reduce the number of uninsured in our state, while also reducing the number of people who are on medicaid."
Still, he doesn't have harsh words for Florida's governor.
"There obvioulsy are a lot of good things that he's doing. He created a budget surplus, unemployment has steadily gone down. I beileve when Governor Scott first came in it was about 12 percent. Now it's about 8 percent."