Scott Walker: A Republican candidate made by liberal activists?

Governor Scott Walker's campaign for president is premised on more than just his conservative achievements in Wisconsin, of which there are many.

The candidate also regularly, almost incessantly, boasts of what he's had to overcome - and whom he's been able to defeat - to enact them. Conservative audiences across the US seem to love him for it.

For the past five years Democratic opponents in a state that has a long tradition of progressive policies have fought the governor over every inch of political terrain.

Now many are wondering if they are, in part, responsible for his rise as a presidential contender. Is Candidate Walker a monster of their own making?

"I regard Walker as one of the most destructive forces in American politics today," says Dave Obey, a retired Democratic congressman from Wisconsin. But Mr Walker's rise, he continues, "would not have been possible without the misguided recall efforts that took place in the state".

Dave Obey, a former Wisconsin congressman, calls the recall effort against Walker "misguided"

The recall drive was a 2012 push to hold a special election to remove Mr Walker from office in the middle of his first term as governor. It followed months of protests by more than 100,000 demonstrators in Madison, the state capital, in an unsuccessful attempt to block passage of a law drastically reducing the collective bargaining power of the state's public employees unions, including teachers.

"I don't blame the unions for thinking that they ought to vote for the recall because he literally was putting them out of business economically as well as politically," Mr Obey adds.

"But sometimes it is helpful if you don't think with your spleen."

The unsuccessful recall efforts, Mr Obey says, made Mr Walker a hero among grass-roots conservatives, allowed him to establish a national fundraising network and gave him a unique talking point in the crowded Republican field.

Including his 2014 re-election, he's won three elections in five years - in a state that hasn't voted for a Republican president in more than 30 years.

Another Wisconsin Democratic insider, speaking on condition of anonymity, was more blunt about the recall effort.

"It was something you just couldn't politically be against, because the activists were so pissed off," he says. "I just wanted this to go the [expletive] away. I was praying they wouldn't get the signatures, but I couldn't stand up in public and say that."

He says that the protests, although well-intentioned, were destined for failure thanks to Republican control of the state legislature. And the recall election was a "disaster" because the Wisconsin public wasn't sold on the legitimacy of the effort.

"At its core was a sort of purity and innocence and stuff that would almost make you believe in American democracy - but it was just so tragically flawed," he says. "It was not going to work, it was just a children's crusade."

During his presidential announcement event on Monday, Mr Walker's political war record came up again and again. There was talk of agitators being bussed in from out of state during the Madison protests and death threats made against Mr Walker and his family.

"Do you remember what it was like to see your governor persecuted for simply putting you back in charge?" Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch asked the audience of around 300. "Like a David to Goliath, Governor Scott Walker had your back. And America, he will again."

After Mr Walker spent nearly 40 minutes boasting of his conservative achievements, members of the audience echoed a similar sentiment.

Thousands of protesters pushed back against a bill that made deep cuts into union bargaining power

Democrats "threw everything at him that they could, and he still won," says Jeff Bishop, of Richfield, Wisconsin, who attended the event with his wife. "That says a lot."

Chris Taylor, then a Wisconsin lobbyist for Planned Parenthood, was among the protesters at the state capitol in 2011, and she bristles at the characterisation of the gathering as an unruly mob.

"The protests were nonviolent," she says. "These were teachers, and kids, and grandmas. They were as Wisconsin as you can get."

Progressives shouldn't regret the demonstrations and recall drive, she says, as they reflected the will of the people independent of Democratic leaders. Mr Walker, she adds, is just a "tricky guy" who has been able to convince the Wisconsin public he's something he's not.

Walker celebrates his success in the 2012 recall election

"He's very moderate in his speech, he's not bombastic, he's very earnest, he's very Mid-Western," Ms Taylor, now a Wisconsin state representative, says. "He's very appealing in that way, but he governs like an extremist."

According to Joel Rivlin, a Wisconsin-based Democratic political consultant, the protests and recall efforts gave Mr Walker a big bump, even if it was fairly clear from the governor's first days in office that he was positioning himself for an eventual presidential bid.

"Even before the recall, he was receiving a ton of money from outside of Wisconsin," he says. "People just assumed he was gearing up for something and had bigger ambitions."

But now, riding a wave of liberal spite, Mr Walker has emerged as a force to be reckoned with in national Republican politics. He's the front-runner in neighbouring Iowa, the first of the 2016 nomination battlegrounds, and is near the top in national approval polls.

Walker's presidential campaign is now officially open for business

While the Republican primary field is filled with high-calibre governors with records of accomplishment - Florida's Jeb Bush, Rick Perry of Texas and New Jersey's Chris Christie, to name but a few - Mr Walker's stands apart.

No other Republican candidate has built a "throne of his enemies' skulls", as the Federalist's Rich Cromwell puts it, quite like the Wisconsin governor.

There's a line by Ralph Waldo Emerson that's often trotted out for coups and revolutions, but could prove equally applicable to the leader of a certain northern dairy state. "Never strike a king unless you are sure you shall kill him."

Scott Walker, despite all the efforts to unseat him, still wears the crown - and now he's eying a much larger dominion.