Jim Rosica
Republican presidential candidate and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker criticized Wednesday night’s debate on CNN for being more focused on personality, rather than on policy differences among the candidates.
Walker appeared Friday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program.
“I thought the American people were shortchanged,” Walker said of the three-hour-long debate. “I said, hey, we’re talking about personalities. We need to be talking about not process, but policy.
“I think there’s a real sense of urgency in America,” he added. “Not anger, but urgency, that Americans are concerned about the economy, they’re concerned about the threats from ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism, they’re concerned the federal government’s grown too big and too far into their lives.”
Critics have taken CNN to task for the debate, according to a summation of reactions by the TVNewser blog.
Slate’s Justin Peters “called the debate an ‘utter failure’ that didn’t manage to inform or entertain.”
Newsweek’s Daniel D’Addario compared the debate to an episode of “Game of Thrones“: “(T)oo many characters, too many subplots and, at three hours, simply too much of everything.”
And Politico’s Hadas Gold called it “the debate from Hell.”
As Walker put it, “(T)his is what’s wrong with this campaign, we’re not really talking about issues.”
“It was pitting one against the other, ” he said. “One of my sons, my 21-year-old son, Matthew, made a great insight. He said, Dad, after that they didn’t ask you a lot of questions because you didn’t attack other candidates.
“I’ve got a plan to take on Obamacare … I start on day one not only sending my plan up to Congress, but signing an order to make Congress live under the same rules as everybody else,” Walker added. “That would get them acting on repealing Obamacare and putting patients and families back in charge of their health care.
“Those are the things people want to talk about. We’re going to keep talking about it.”
Walker, now serving a second term, is polling in the middle of GOP pack at 3.3 percent, according the latest national average by The Huffington Post.
After his union-busting plan caused mass protests at the Wisconsin Capitol, Walker in 2012 became the first governor to survive a recall effort.
Here’s the video: http://on.msnbc.com/1KqkDsW
