Republicans wince at Wisconsin GOP crack-up

Donald Trump’s baseless claims of a rigged election are tearing Wisconsin Republicans apart.

By DAVID SIDERS

02/20/2022 07:00 AM EST

MILWAUKEE — Timothy Ramthun’s entry into Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary last weekend was the car wreck no one could look away from. His campaign is built around the preposterous idea the 2020 election could still be overturned — something even sympathetic Republicans here acknowledge is impossible. His campaign website went live, only to be deactivated. His three-hour campaign kickoff featured the appearance of Mike Lindell, the pillow salesperson and conspiracy theorist. “It’s Tim time,” Ramthun, a state lawmaker, told supporters, while political professionals in Wisconsin cringed.

The problem for the Wisconsin Republican Party is that it isn’t just Ramthun. The entire party has been erupting on a near-daily basis here. In recent weeks, several county parties have called on the state’s longtime Republican Assembly speaker, Robin Vos, to resign, accusing one of Wisconsin’s most reliable conservatives of doing too little to pursue baseless claims the 2020 election was rigged. Other local party leaders are objecting to — or considering ignoring — the state party’s endorsement process in critical midterm elections, arguing it’s exclusionary. And in addition to Ramthun, there’s another gubernatorial candidate, Kevin Nicholson — who is openly warring with the state party, casting its chair as part of a “broken machine.”

It’s an unusual level of dysfunction for a state party that not so long ago was regarded as a model for conservatism nationally. And it may have disastrous implications for the party in the fall of what otherwise looks like a favorable year for Republicans across the electoral map, undercutting fundraising and turnout efforts in the GOP’s bid to reelect Sen. Ron Johnson and to unseat the state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers. “We’re going to spend millions of dollars tearing ourselves apart,” said Jack Yuds, chair of the Dodge County GOP, while Evers “is going to be sitting on millions of dollars” to use against the Republican nominee in November. “I don’t like it,” he said. “We’ve got to focus the group.”

The upheaval in Wisconsin is, in part, a reflection of primary politics that are unusually contentious nearly everywhere this year. And it’s an expression of near-universal anger among rank-and-file Republicans about Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020. But the rancor in Wisconsin is distinct in one important way. Unlike in some other states, such as Georgia and Arizona, activists here are not only repudiating their party’s entrenched elected officials, but the actual party itself. “People are pissed,” said Terry Brand, the chair of the Republican Party in rural Langlade County. The signs of discontent are hard to miss. On Saturday, activists wearing heavy coats and fur-lined hats in the freezing cold held signs that read “Decertify Now!” and “Toss Vos” outside a county Republican Party meeting in Waukesha, a GOP stronghold in the suburbs of Milwaukee.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/20/wisconsin-republicans-trump-00010378