No one should be surprise at how easy it is to fool this crop of Republican legislators. They are puppets and to be a puppet it is essential that you do not have much upstairs or common sense.
That is the only way you can believably push GOP talking points which are general devoid of facts or reality without growing a fairly large Pinocchio nose.
That said I think the audio is damaging as it shows the real intent of the Republicans and that they believe it is a Koch driven agenda. It is time for Progressives to play this tape up as the Right would have done on FoxNews. It is imperative that they note that while an imaginary “Koch billionaire” could reach the governor, elected Senators wanting to work like adults could not.
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WASHINGTON — The man who pretended to be conservative bankroller David Koch on a prank phone call with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said Wednesday that he originally planned to pose as exiled Egypt President Hosni Mubarak but couldn’t perfect the voice. Ian Murphy, the editor of the Buffalo Beast, told The Huffington Post in an interview that he was "shocked" at how easy it was to get Walker, currently the nation’s most-talked-about governor, on the phone merely by pretending to be a billionaire donor.
"Fifteen minutes in, I wanted to almost stop it and say, ‘Are you so dumb, I’m not David Koch. How can your staff be so incompetent and how could I get on the phone with you so easily,’" Murphy said, barely suppressing his glee. "But I didn’t."
Instead, Murphy spent an additional five minutes talking to Walker about a host of outlandish proposals and takes on the protests that have erupted around the governor’s anti-union budget legislation. Walker’s office insists that he said nothing on the phone with Murphy that he wouldn’t have said in public, but the governor pitched the Koch impersonator some bizarre plans.
Walker said he wanted to ostensibly trick Democratic lawmakers to return to Wisconsin so that he could call a quorum and quickly pass his bill to strip collective-bargaining rights from the state’s public-employee unions. He also talked openly about putting plants in the crowd of protesters to sway public opinion against their favor.
"He didn’t do it because it was unethical, but because it didn’t work," Murphy said. "People ask me what was the smoking gun. That’s what I’m saying."
How the call came to happen provides a window of sorts into how even the most audacious forms of guerrilla journalism — if a prank call can be called that — can affect political debates. Murphy said he came across a Huffington Post article quoting a Democratic state Senator complaining that Walker wouldn’t take his calls.
Scott Walker’s Prank Caller: I Was Going To Pretend To Be Mubarak First