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Governor Walker accepts a phone call from a prankster pretending to be David Koch.

Walker's office admits that it's him:

The Governor takes many calls everyday. Throughout this call the Governor maintained his appreciation for and commitment to civil discourse. He continued to say that the budget repair bill is about the budget. The phone call shows that the Governor says the same thing in private as he does in public and the lengths that others will go to disrupt the civil debate Wisconsin is having.

Walker opponents would love to make something of this phone call, but all they have are a few over-the-line things the Koch impersonator said like "You gotta crush that union." Walker just ignores that stuff and goes on with his standard points, which is probably the standard strategy that most politicians use when people interact with them.

You could say that it's bad that the prankster got through, but that shows that he's willing to talk to a lot of people and also that David Koch isn't a frequent caller who gets special treatment and is recognized by his caller ID and his voice and manner of speaking.

Doesn't this prank call prove that Scott Walker is not close to Koch? He doesn't recognize his voice! He doesn't drift into a more personal style of speech. He treats him like a generic political supporter.

(Here's Monday's NYT article floating the theory that Walker is too close to the Koch brothers. In my frequent forays to the protest at the Capitol, I've seen many signs depicting Walker as a creation or puppet of the Koch brothers.)

Full post as published by Althouse on February 23, 2011 (boomark / email).