From boring Midwestern governor Scott Walker:
The left claims that they’re for American workers and they’ve just got just really lame ideas — things like the minimum wage.
Well, there are some economists who would agree with him, but essentially no ordinary Americans. The minimum wage is almost as beloved as Social Security. In fact, ordinary Americans not only like the minimum wage, but about 70 percent of them think it should be raised. So Walker is definitely taking a bold stand here.
Oddly enough, as Steve Benen points out, this has become sort of a thing among Republicans lately. They’ve always opposed increases to the minimum wage, of course, but now a lot of them oppose the minimum wage itself. Where has this suddenly come from? Perhaps someone who follows the right-wing idea network can give us a rundown. I mean, sure, Milton Friedman opposed the minimum wage, but conservatives apparently abandoned anything remotely Friedmanesque during the Great Recession. So it can’t be that.
So what is it? Why has this suddenly jumped from mumblings in Heritage Foundation white papers to campaign platforms for presidential candidates?
