THE KOCHS NEVER WORE BREAD-BAG GALOSHES OR BOUGHT A SHIRT ON SALE AT KOHL'S

According to USA Today, a new political hero shot to stardom over the weekend because he bargain-shops:

Good reviews from the Iowa Freedom Summit keep pouring in for Scott Walker.

The Wisconsin governor may have helped his presidential ambitions with his speech Saturday....

An anecdote from Walker about shopping at Kohl’s seemed to underscore his budget-cutting ways and his ability to relate to voters.

He noted that he and his wife, Tonette, will celebrate their 23rd wedding anniversary next month. When they were first married, Walker recalled, he bought a sweater at Kohl’s -- for full price. Tonette chided him, saying he could never go back to the store again “until you learn how to shop at Kohl’s.” (Translation: Wait for a sale, use coupons or deals from Kohl’s rewards program.)

Fast forward to a more recent purchase, with Walker joking he had used so many coupons and other discounts and “the next thing you know they are paying me to buy that shirt!”

John Dickerson of CBS News, writing in a column for Slate, summed up the appeal of Walker’s anecdote: “I’m one of you” the governor was saying....

I read this around the same time I read Peggy Noonan's spirited defense of the "bread bag" anecdote in Senatot Joni Ernst's State of the Union response:

Response on the left to Ernst and the bread bags was snobbish, superior and dumb to the point of embarrassing. First, they couldn’t believe it -- no one wears bread bags on their shoes in a storm, how absurd, she must be developmentally challenged. Then they denigrated what she said, putting pictures on Twitter of themselves wearing bread bags on their feet, accompanied by comments that had all the whiff of the upper class speaking of the quaint ways of the help....

I liked what Ernst said because it was real.

I have no desire to mock either of these people for having to make do with less at various points in their lives. But here's another story I just read, which reminds me that no matter who the public face of the GOP is in the near future, the people running the show are folks who think Kohl's sales and bread-bag galoshes are for losers:

The Koch brothers’ political operation intends to spend $889 million in the run-up to the 2016 elections, according to an attendee at the operation’s annual winter donor gathering in the California desert.

The spending goal, shared with donors at a Monday morning session at the Rancho Mirage Ritz Carlton, reflects the sweeping ambition of a private conservative political network that in many ways has eclipsed the power of the official Republican Party.

The $889 million spending goal dwarfs the $404 million the Republican National Committee spent during the 2012 election and the $188 million it dropped during last year’s midterm campaign....

The Kochs, who've given a hell of a lot of money to Ms. Bread Bag and (especially) to Mr. Kohl's Sale Rack, were born with silver spoons in their mouths. They've never had to scrimp or make do. So even if we get a Walker/Ernst ticket in 2016, I don't want to hear about the "Main Street values" of the post-Romney GOP. The puppets were once of modest means. The puppet masters never were.