The consensus is that Scott Walker has suspended his campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination because he did lot of things wrong. The bottom line is that Walker (a) never even began to ignite in the polls and (b) ran out of money. One of the factors, according to New York‘s Jonathan Chait, is that “wealthy New York donors came away from discussions with Walker concerned that he actually believed what he said in public about same-sex marriage.” He just never seemed like much of a vision guy. He was never able to shuck that Wisconsin governor comfort-zone attitude. The only time he really stepped up to the plate was in his quitting speech, when he urged other weak sisters to get out of the race so that somebody strong can defeat Trump.
Then again many voters (especially Republicans) decide who they like based on primal gut reasons. The one thing I liked about Walker was that he’s a big Harley Davidson guy, and the one thing I really didn’t like about him (apart from his being an anti-union servant of the Koch brothers) was his bald spot. This may sound silly to some, but I suspect that this physical shortcoming did him no favors. Think about it — Americans haven’t elected a President with even a slight balding issue since Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 — 60 years ago. Every elected President since John F. Kennedy has had a full head of hair. I’m not suggesting that Gerald Ford‘s bald spot meant all that much to voters in ’76, but I think it might have been a marginal factor in his loss to Jimmy Carter. I’m only saying that the Samson rule of thumb (i.e., hair = virility, potency) still has a residue of traction.