DES MOINES — It was a memorable political ad: Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin spoke directly into the camera in a 30-second spot last fall and called abortion an “agonizing” decision. He described himself as pro-life but, borrowing the language of the abortion rights movement, pointed to legislation he signed that leaves “the final decision to a woman and her doctor.”
That language was gone when Mr. Walker met privately with Iowa Republicans in a hotel conference room last month, according to a person who attended the meeting. There, he highlighted his early support for a “personhood amendment,” which defines life as beginning at conception and would effectively prohibit all abortions and some methods of birth control.
Mr. Walker has quickly vaulted into the top tier of likely Republican candidates in the presidential race, surging on the reputation he earned by taking on labor unions and surviving a bitter recall election in a swing state.
But the governor is also making an aggressive effort to win the hearts of the party’s Christian conservatives. In doing so, he is stressing a much harder line on social issues than he did just a few months ago, when he faced a robust challenge from a well-funded Democratic woman in his run for re-election as governor.
The shift in emphasis and tone is noticeable not only on abortion, but also on same-sex marriage, another issue of intense interest to social conservatives.
A few weeks before the November election, in an interview with The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the governor sidestepped questions about his earlier opposition to abortion, and declined four times to answer directly when asked if abortion should be prohibited after 20 weeks — a position he had previously embraced. He also declined to restate his earlier opposition to abortion in cases of rape and incest.
But in a breakout speech in Iowa on Jan. 24, he drew loud applause from the crowd of conservative activists when he declared that he had passed “pro-life legislation” in Wisconsin and “defunded Planned Parenthood.”
“It was strikingly a different portrayal of abortion than the way he portrayed it in the fall election here,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll, who closely follows Mr. Walker. “He has consistently played down the importance of abortion in Wisconsin as an issue.”
Mr. Walker does not appear to be rewriting his positions on specific issues; instead he is trying to redraw his political image from a fiscally minded governor who warned his party not to be distracted by divisive social issues to a conservative presidential candidate who will fight hard for these issues. He is also reframing his fight with public employee unions from a fiscal showdown to part of a broader culture war.
Asked about the shift, Mr. Walker’s campaign declined to discuss specific policies but released a statement describing him “as a full-spectrum conservative who has focused on big, bold reforms that have transformed Wisconsin after tough economic times.”
“He is a pro-life, traditional-marriage Republican who has taken on the special interests,” the statement said.
While Mr. Walker is courting Christian conservatives, he is also competing against former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida for support from elite donors around the country. Mr. Walker hopes to emerge as a bridge candidate who can attract the party’s establishment-oriented wing and its more conservative, heavily evangelical grass roots.
Creating such a coalition — as George W. Bush did in 2000 — would make Mr. Walker a formidable candidate in a nominating process that features socially conservative states like Iowa and South Carolina, along with more fiscally focused voters in New Hampshire.
“I think he’s going to make the case we nominate the most conservative person possible who has the ability to win in a general election,” said Matt Moore, the chairman of the Republican Party of South Carolina, who met with Mr. Walker privately at the Republican National Committee meeting in San Diego last month.
Unlike Jeb Bush, Mr. Walker refused to say last week if he believes President Obama loves America after Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, claimed the president did not at a dinner that Mr. Walker attended.
Mr. Bush and other presidential hopefuls said the president’s patriotism was not in doubt. But Mr. Walker repeatedly said he did not know. On Saturday, he said he did not know whether Mr. Obama was a Christian.
The question for Mr. Walker is whether social conservatives, who demand authenticity and detailed answers on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and immigration, can view him as one of their own. It may be especially challenging for Mr. Walker, who has survived Wisconsin’s rough and Democratic-leaning political world by often de-emphasizing the core issues that most excite social conservatives.
On immigration, he has walked a tightrope, saying that millions of undocumented immigrants should have a pathway to citizenship that includes penalties, while also insisting that such a position is not “amnesty.” PolitiFact recently called the governor “hard to pin down on the question.”
In 2013, Mr. Walker embarked on a New York-Washington tour to promote his just-published memoir, “Unintimidated,” and argued that Republicans, to win back the White House, must not become distracted from a focus on fiscal issues.
Asked about same-sex marriage, he told The Hill, a Washington publication, “I don’t talk about it at all.” As for defunding Planned Parenthood, he dismissed the issue as something that “gets some activists worked up, but taxpayers say, ‘What’s the big deal there?’ ”
Gary Bauer, a conservative activist and onetime presidential candidate, criticized Mr. Walker at the time for turning “timid on values issues.”
“These days, Walker’s position seems to be, ‘Sure, I’m pro-life, but I’d rather not talk about it,’ ” Mr. Bauer wrote in The Daily Caller.
Last fall, after the Supreme Court rejected his appeal to preserve Wisconsin’s ban on same-sex marriage, Mr. Walker conceded, “For us, it’s over in Wisconsin.” During the meeting with Iowa Christian conservative leaders last month, when the same issue arose, he struck a different posture, said the person who attended.
“His comment was the court may feel as though the issue is settled at this point because they refused to hear our case, but for me the issue is not settled and we’re going to continue to fight for those values that are important to voters,” the attendee said. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the meeting with Mr. Walker, which included fewer than a half-dozen people, was meant to be private.
Mr. Walker is taking other steps, hiring operatives who ran the Iowa presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee in 2008 and of Michele Bachmann in 2012, and Joni Ernst’s Senate run in Iowa last year. For his national staff he recruited Gregg Keller, a former executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, which was founded by the Christian conservative Ralph Reed. Mr. Walker has scheduled a meeting in the coming days with Russell D. Moore, the influential head of policy for the Southern Baptist Convention.
The son of a Baptist preacher, Mr. Walker, 47, said at a Republican prayer breakfast last month that he was waiting for “guidance from the Lord” about whether to run, according to a participant. He tells supporters that he could feel their prayers during “the darkest days” of his confrontation with the public employee unions.
He has also recast that episode from a struggle over fiscal issues to something more elemental: a battle in the culture war against hostile, extreme groups bent on hate and disruption. In his speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit last month, he thanked the crowd for the prayers that he said had sustained him and his family while they were under attack and even physically threatened by opponents.
“Most of the death threats were directed at me, but some of the worst were directed at my family,” he told a rapt crowd. “I remember one of the ones that bothered me the most was someone literally sent me a threat that said they were going to ‘gut my wife like a deer.’ Another time, a protester sent a threat directly to my wife that said if she didn’t do something to stop me, I would be the first Wisconsin governor ever assassinated.”
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