And Not The Folks Who Voted Them Into Office
What kind of people elect crackpots like Chuck Wichgers and Joe Donnell to represent them? I’ll answer that: The kind of people who have turned the Republican Party into a threat to America. Wichgers, a 57 year old businessman first elected in 2016, is from Muskego in Waukesha County. A virulent racist, he’s best known as the anti-CRT kook in the legislature. He’s also anti-vaccine, not just COVID, all vaccine. He’s also anti-Choice and an anti-democracy election denier. Yeah, this guy is bad news. But so is Waukesha County, which gave Trump around 60% of its vote both times he ran.
As for South Dakota state Rep. Joe Donnell, he represents HD-01 in the northeast corner of South Dakota, including folks in Brown, Marshall, Roberts and Day counties and he’s even crazier than Wichgers, if that's possible. The district is pretty out there as well. In 2020:
Brown- 60.3% Trump
Day- 63.1% Trump
Marshall- 59.1% Trump
Roberts- 55.8% Trump
He went to a Buy-Bull college and is a homophobic maniac, a total anti-Choice evangelical nut and is obsessed with CRT and children’s bathrooms. He’s also firmly against marijuana legalization. But none of that is why he’s in the news this week. He was on a radio show where he informed the listeners that Mount Rushmore is a demonic portal spreading communism across the country. “Even Donald Trump’s landing in the Black Hills at Mount Rushmore on July 4, when the governor Kristi Noem put the message out that fireworks are returning to South Dakota, that was a prophetic word… And I kinda got the feeling that what we’re really dealing with in that portal was communism. That witchcraft altar and those things that are happening in the Black Hills; what we’re really dealing with is communism; it’s the ideology and all the demonic entities and spirits behind that.”
Can you imagine voting for someone like that? True, he lost his bid for a state Senate seat by a landslide last year, but he was still reelected to the House. You think he wants to stop Trump?
As for Wichgers, he was in the news this week because he wants to ban contraception. He claims contraception opens up the door to marital infidelity, spreads sexually transmitted diseases and leads to governmental tyranny. Some of his colleagues couldn’t hold back their laughter when he spoke on the House floor. “The government might force contraceptives upon married couples— that happened in other countries— so the government gets to have a role; they get to play supreme ruler. It increases the loss of respect for women that men get to do whatever they want and then women have to be able to control the natural reproductive course of the body… We would begin to see ourselves as the ultimate masters of Nature.” How about that for crazy? You think Wichgers will help stop Trump?
Over the weekend, the New Yorker published an essay by John Cassidy, Can Anybody Stop Donald Trump In The 2024 Republican Primary? He’s the Republican Party and the Republican Party is Donald Trump. The fever hasn’t broken and probably won’t for a very long time, so… my answer to his question is NO. He reminds his readers that although Señor Trumpanzee is way ahead in the polling, there’s still plenty of time to take him down. There is plenty of time, although Trump has had momentum and the others… haven’t. So all that time can be as easily predicted to make Trump stronger, not weaker. And I’m not alone in that kind of pessimism.
Cassidy noted that many political observers don’t think it’s likely that anyone could beat Trump. They're probably right. But Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican consultant and pollster, told Cassidy that “the result of the primary is more uncertain than the polls suggest. ‘Being honest, it’s a long shot for anybody not named Trump,’ he said. ‘But I also think it’s premature to write anybody off.’ Ayres based this conclusion on his analysis of the Republican electorate, which he says is split into three parts: Trump’s base, which is about a third of the total, and will support him under virtually any circumstance; Never Trumpers, who constitute about ten to twelve per cent of GOP voters; and a voting bloc that Ayres refers to as Maybe Trumpers— Republicans who voted for Trump twice and would vote for him again if he wins the nomination, but who also think he has too much baggage and are, therefore, at least willing to consider an alternative. ‘The real question is whether any of the other candidates can consolidate that Maybe Trump portion of the Party,’ Ayres said.”
Too bad for Republicans that DeSantis turned out to be such a total dud— and arguably as bad as Trump. No one wants to make America Florida, except him. I completely disagree with him but Ayres says DeSantis has been losing support for two reasons: “slipups on DeSantis’ part, including his description of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a ‘territorial dispute,’ and the big political boost among Republican voters that Trump received when Alvin Bragg, the Democratic District Attorney for Manhattan, indicted him on charges of falsifying business records to conceal payoffs to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 Presidential campaign. ‘It was an ideal case for Trump to paint as a partisan witch hunt,’ Ayres said, citing the novel legal theory that the Manhattan D.A. relied on to elevate misdemeanor counts to felonies.”
I think DeSantis has lost support because people have gotten to know him and he’s extremely unlikeable. MAGAt voters don’t care that Meatball Ron said the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a territorial dispute. They care that he makes them queasy when he’s on TV. Cassidy is looking for rational explanations for why no one is rallying around DeSantis’ campaign and why Republicans love Trump so much. Give every Republican an IQ test and have teams of psychologists examine them using the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM Disorders and you’ll see exactly what the problem is… the Republican base has been brainwashed by Fox, hate talk radio and anti-Jesus fake Christianity. They are Marjorie Traitor Greene and Lauren Boebert-- the vast majority of them are off the deep end.
Ayres thinks no one can get close to Trump unless someone catches fire and defeats him in Iowa or New Hampshire, two states where Trump is leading. This is crazy talk from a pro like Ayres. He even offers some kind of sad rationale for Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and Will Hurd. The only question about those 3 is if one of them can ever get to double digits in the polls— answer is no— and when they will drop out and endorse Trump. Hurd probably won’t endorse Trump.
“For an effective anti-Trump move to take place, of course,” wrote Cassidy, “the GOP would have to display the sort of coördination that the moderate wing of the Democratic Party showed in 2020 after Bernie Sanders finished first in the New Hampshire primary. On that occasion, Congressman James Clyburn threw his support behind Joe Biden in South Carolina, and two of the moderate candidates— Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar— dropped out and endorsed Biden. Ayres didn’t go so far as to say that a Republican Party still dominated by Trump could engineer a similar feat, but he did say the political environment was too volatile and unpredictable to crown the former President. And he added, ‘Six months ago, they were ready to give DeSantis a coronation.’”
They were idiots and desperate 6 months ago. They still are today. The Republican candidates know there are only two scenarios where Trump doesn't win-- he dies or he goes to prison... and the former is way more likely than the latter.