This time around, Walker is making it clear he won’t be dropping out of anything and is fully determined to win the governorship back for the slumping Republicans. Walker will announce his candidacy no later than January and is already planning a major fundraiser to kick off the effort. That’s right, January of ‘09. The election may not be until the end of 2010, but Walker intends to spend a full 18 months raising the kind of money necessary to scare off any potential Republican challengers and, more importantly, beat Jim Doyle (or whomever the Democrat is) in the general election.

What Walker has done in Milwaukee County is amazing. He has governed from the right in a county whose voting patterns are clearly from the left. He has held the line on property taxes at the same time neighboring governments have raised their levies through the roof. He has managed the county through the nightmare created by monstrous pension benefits implemented by his predecessor and the county board. His administration hasn’t had a hint of scandal.

Walker’s fiscal responsibility message will be especially powerful in 2010 if, as expected, the Democrats deal with a massive state budget deficit by passing monster tax hikes. He is a political nightmare for the Democrats. No Democrat can carry Wisconsin without getting at least 60 percent of the vote in Milwaukee County. Walker’s Milwaukee popularity gives him a real chance of actually winning the county outright. He has benefited from years of coverage in the Milwaukee media that has made him extremely popular in conservative suburban counties. A lot of voters in Washington, Racine, Ozaukee and Waukesha counties have been chomping at the bit in anticipation of getting a chance to vote for the one politician who walks the no-tax walk.

A few other Republicans are considering running. Tommy Thompson’s 9-foot shadow is still lurking. Former state Republican chair Rick Graber wants to run (he’s a great guy but the state treasurer job is the one that ought to have Graber’s name on it). Some think Congressman Paul Ryan might run but that’s very unlikely. In any event, by getting the jump on all of them by aggressively beginning his fundraising now, Walker is likely to do to any other Republicans what Green did to him.

Walker is hardly the most charismatic politician in the world but he’s still relatively young, he’s great on television and he may have the right message in 2010 after Obama, Doyle, Pelosi and the teachers union combine to give us a tax burden an elephant couldn’t carry. The Scott Walker governor campaign is on. Don’t bet against it.

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The pension obligations that are driving General Motors, Ford and Chrysler to the grave are ominous warnings of what is in store for taxpayers the next 20 years. The auto companies are collapsing under the weight of having to pay enormous retirement benefits to the hundreds of thousands of workers who have either retired or been laid off.

The terrible Wisconsin policy of allowing public employees, including teachers, to retire after 35 years of service is beginning to produce the same problem here. As the baby boomers are moving into retirement years, the pension rolls are going to be overwhelmed. The problem is being exacerbated by the stock market crash which is draining money out of the pension funds.

GM has five retirees for every active worker. Wisconsin will eventually have several hundred thousand public retirees on the dole with a decreasing supply of tax-paying workers to support them. At least the auto companies can go bankrupt and dump the pensions on the federal government. Taxpayers in Wisconsin won’t have that option.

The same problem will occur at the federal level as millions of baby boomers go on the Social Security and Medicare dole. Both systems are headed for bust. To make matters worse, Obama and the congressional Democrats seem bent on creating even more entitlement programs. In 20 years, when the youngest baby boomer will be 64 years old, it is impossible to imagine where the money will come from to pay all of these retirement costs.

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Democratic sources tell me it is now highly unlikely Governor Doyle will be named to a top Obama administration job now. It is much more likely that incompetent Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton will be named to a low level federal post in order to allow Doyle to name a more able replacement for her. This would allow Obama to eventually give Doyle a federal job without leaving Democrats here in the lurch by having to put up with a "Governor" Lawton.

(Mark Belling is the host of a daily WISN radio talk show. His column runs Wednesdays in The Freeman.)