Predictably, the Scott Walker 2016 bandwagon is already on the road, two days after the Wisconsin Republican governor beat challenger Mary Burke by a larger than expected margin. On election night the National Review asked: “Tonight’s big 2016 winner: Scott Walker?” Rush Limbaugh simply calls him “Scott Walker, Superstar.” That makes me think of Molly Shannon, but Limbaugh means it as a compliment.

The man himself is not doing anything to quiet such speculation. “I’ve never made a time commitment anywhere I’ve been in office,” he told reporters Tuesday night. “I’ve always made promises about what I would do and how I would do it. I’m not going to change now.”

Republicans make a big deal about Walker beating opponents three times in four years, as though surviving a recall is a badge of honor, not shame. (Limbaugh mistakenly says he survived “a couple of recalls.”) So be it: The GOP likes its politicians divisive, and Walker did indeed win three elections.

But like all the right-wing radicals elected governor in 2010, Walker is blessed by never having to survive a presidential election year. Turnout on Tuesday was 55 percent, even lower than the 57 percent in the recall, and far below the 70 percent turnout in the 2012 election, when President Obama carried the state.

In the end, Burke mostly ran a high-minded campaign to appeal to moderates and independents (her ads got saltier in the end), and while exit polls say she won moderates narrowly, Walker won independents 54-43. The Madison Democrat ran a fine campaign for a newcomer, but she ultimately didn’t galvanize her base the way Walker did his. In Milwaukee, the Democrats’ urban stronghold, turnout was 65 percent, down from an astonishing 87 percent in 2012, when Obama won the state. I can’t find numbers on black voter turnout, but while Burke won African-Americans 90-10 (Obama won 94-6), the total had to be lower than in 2012, given the big drop in Milwaukee, despite visits from the president and first lady.

None of this propels Walker to the front of the 2016 pack, even given that the pack is, if not weak, exactly, rather eccentric. I still don’t think New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie can make the race, given his own legal problems, but he is a dynamic campaigner (albeit a bully) who in 2013, at least, appealed beyond the GOP’s narrow base. Sen. Rand Paul is almost certain to jump in, and he’s enjoying a media honeymoon for combining time-honored far-right economic policies and uneven anti-interventionism with refreshing honesty about the GOP’s problems with non-white voters. Sen. Ted Cruz looks like he’ll be out there, too, running to the right of Paul and insisting Republicans don’t have to broaden their outreach to GOP doubters but simply crush them.

Walker’s appeal to national Republicans seems to be he’s a sleepy-eyed radical with a folksy non-charisma, so he won’t scare normal people the way Cruz does. But Walker is no moderate: RNC chairman Reince Priebus disclosed at CPAC this year that the then-Milwaukee county executive was among 15 Koch-allied radicals present at the creation of what became Wisconsin’s Tea Party movement way back in 2007, developing a template to bust unions and cut taxes. Grover Norquist boasted that Walker gave him the pen he used to sign his budget repair bill in 2011.