Wisconsin governor and former presidential candidate Scott Walker formally suspended his campaign Monday, citing the plethora of candidates and general negativity as reasons for withdrawing from the race.

Gov. Scott Walker formally drops out of 2016 presidential race

But, as evidenced by Walker’s implicit and explicit remarks, the only candidate representing the deliberate positivity Walker hopes to find in the nation’s new leader is not in the Republican pool. It’s Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Each point on the continuum of Walker’s dropping out speech reads like a Sanders campaign speech. Walker said,“I believe that the voters want to be for something, not against someone.” Sanders is continuously mute when questions are posed to attack other candidates, notably Hillary Clinton. Sanders is always dripping with optimism, fighting for a living wage and combating childhood poverty.

This is a drastic step for Walker, a self-proclaimed conservative, to support Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist. The many different shades of Republicans are not enough for Walker, either being too much into the establishment or too pessimistic. Walker is Goldilocks, with Sanders being the candidate that is just right.

This isn’t Walker’s first instance of secretly supporting Sanders. In the first Republican debate, Walker mentioned that the U.S needs to have a stronger presence in the Middle East, namely in Israel and Egypt. Sanders, two months before this Republican debate, mentioned the need for a stronger relationship for the U.S. in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Walker is known for his heavy conservative stances, especially here in Wisconsin. He’s busted unions, cut funding for higher education and focused on reviving a dying manufacturing industry. Walker, however, is a potent flip-flopper, and he, quite possibly, could just be recognizing the will of the American people to support Sanders.

As Walker said in the first televised Republican debate, while answering a question about changing his stance on immigration from a path to citizenship to heavily securing the Mexico border, “I actually listen to the American people.”

An explicit endorsement for Sanders by the Walker campaign would be political suicide. That’s why Walker’s exit speech was nuanced with hidden Sanders support messages. Why would Walker mention the “people creating jobs” or “growing the economy from the ground up?” The Republican party is known for top-down changes, such as trickle down economics. This is an unnatural egalitarian viewpoint for a seemingly die-hard conservative to adopt, suggesting something more is going on here — Walker is feeling the Bern.

Aaron Reilly ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring comparative literature and Russian.