HIS ENTIRE GUBERNATORIAL LEGACY IS, AFTER ALL, JUST ONE LABOR LAW:

[G]OP state lawmakers aren't nearly as enthusiastic about an agenda some see as geared more toward what plays well at those out-of-state stops than what's best for the people back home. While Walker chatted up Iowans from the seat of his Harley-Davidson last weekend, his fellow Republicans in the state Legislature continued to rework Walker's budget, having already reversed politically unpopular cuts to education, among other things.

It was just the Friday before last that the Legislature's budget committee eased Walker's cuts to the University of Wisconsin System after previously stopping his $127 million hit to public schools. Right about the time the Joint Finance Committee wrapped up its final vote on that piece of the budget late that evening, Walker was 1,000 miles away in New Hampshire addressing the Belknap County GOP Sunset Dinner Cruise.

"The university doesn't deserve this cut. This is just reality," GOP state Sen. Luther Olsen said ahead of the vote. "To tell people that they're not working hard enough and they should teach more is probably just ridiculous," he said, responding to the claim by Walker and others that the university could absorb the cut through things like requiring professors to teach one extra class a semester.

It's a scene that's played out more than once this spring as lawmakers wrangle with Walker's budget and other issues. His frequent out-of-state trips have given Democrats plenty of fodder to declare Walker an absentee governor placing his expected presidential run above the needs of Wisconsinites.

Walker has repeatedly brushed off the suggestion, pointing out he's on the phone constantly with his chief of staff and legislative leaders, no matter where he is. He's also scored significant victories on the things he likes to tout on the national campaign trail, like holding down property taxes, and GOP lawmakers insist publicly the governor is just as available to them as he was in each of his first two budgets, even if he's often not at the table.

But it is somewhat odd to see a likely presidential candidate who has pinned much of his candidacy on the fights he's won back home suffering loss after loss on his latest set of budget priorities--especially at the hands of his own party. Some GOP lawmakers privately see a governor who's rarely on the bully pulpit to provide leadership on things like passing right-to-work, the effort by some Republicans to repeal the prevailing wage and securing the long-term future of the state's transportation fund.

Some also complain bitterly--though almost never in public--that Walker's budget was drafted with his presidential aspirations in mind, not what's good for the state long term.

"We may have a crap budget, but we're going to make it better," freshman GOP state Rep. Rob Brooks said in an unusually blunt moment while on the Assembly floor.

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