The willingness of Wisconsin Republicans to entertain Donald Trump's big lie and eventually douse his flaming conspiracy with even more fuel is coming back to haunt them in a year that many had hoped would see a red wave sweep the state.
Instead, elected Republicans along with state GOP officials have now become top targets for a conservative citizenry burrowed so far down a conspiracy rabbit hole, it cannot find its way out.
The Badger State's right-wing foot soldiers have latched on to the outright lie that Wisconsin's 2020 elections could be decertified, triggering similar efforts in other states that could ultimately result in Trump's reinstatement. Anyone who disagrees becomes an immediate target and archenemy. At the same time, a raft of GOP opportunists have happily jumped on board, hoping to ride the outlandish fervor straight into power.
“We don’t wear tinfoil hats,” said Wisconsin State Rep. Timothy Ramthun, who launched his gubernatorial bid earlier this month complete with an introduction from pillow guy conspiracist extraordinaire, Mike Lindell. “We’re not fringe.”
At a rally last week drawing several hundred pro-Trump activists to Wisconsin’s Capitol rotunda, the GOP chair of the Assembly election committee offered a similar sentiment.
“You’re not crazy,” Rep. Janel Brandtjen told the crowd.
But it was another avid fever-dream fanner who offered the most apt description as he took in the scene at the state's seat of government.
“People are foaming at the mouth over this issue,” Terry Brand, GOP chair of rural Langlade County, told The New York Times. Brand helped organize an effort to bus in some two dozen activists from three hours away.
Wisconsin’s GOP voters have been ripe for exploitation after very few Republican office holders bothered to combat Trump's claims in the aftermath of 2020. A Marquette University Law School poll last fall found that 64% of Republicans said they were "not confident" about the 2020 election results in which Joe Biden won the state by some 20,700 votes, or just over half a percentage point.
Instead, GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos bowed to Trump's attacks on him last summer and tapped former conservative Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to lead a state audit that is expected to cost taxpayers $676,000.
Assembly Republicans also recently heard testimony on potential 2020 fraud from expert fraudster and supposed "data analyst" Peter Bernegger, who was released from federal prison in 2014 after being convicted of bank and mail fraud.
Still, Vos hasn't been fervent enough for Trump reinstatement dead-enders, who now regularly wield signs emblazoned with "Toss Vos."
According to the Times, Vos devoted nearly an hour last Friday on a conservative radio show to trying to disabuse conspiracy-laden callers of the notion that the 2020 result could be decertified.
“It is impossible — it cannot happen,” he said. “I don’t know how many times I can say that.”
The party establishment's favorite to win the GOP nomination, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, is also walking a tight rope. Although Kleefisch conceded Biden's victory last fall, she has more recently refused to admit in interviews that Biden won the state.
Roughly nine months out from an election Republicans hope to sweep, many GOP operatives and elected officials are cringing.
“This is just not what the Republican Party needs right now,” said conservative Rep. Rob Swearingen. “We shouldn’t be fighting among ourselves about what happened, you know, a year and a half ago.”
“We’re going to spend millions of dollars tearing ourselves apart,” Jack Yuds, chair of the Dodge County GOP, told Politico.
But Democrats—who hope to hold on to the governorship while potentially ousting U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson from office—are eager to shine to the klieg lights on the GOP meltdown.
“Republicans now are arguing over whether we want democracy or not,” Democratic Gov. Tony Evers told the Times.
The best-case scenario for Democrats, of course, would be a primary defeat that leaves one faction of the GOP so bitter that a precious slice of Republican voters sit out the general elections. Those rumblings are starting to emerge, according to Politico.
In Iowa County, west of Madison, the local Republican Party’s own social media offerings last week featured a warning that “GOP leaders are making a grave mistake if they continue to refuse to listen to their constituents,” with voters “who either ARE DETERMINED not to vote in upcoming elections (if the situation remains unchanged in terms of fixing the problems that occurred in the 2020 election) or who will not vote for any of the current Republican leadership who refuse to address the people’s concerns about election integrity.”
At the same time, any Republican displaying a smidge of integrity stands a good chance of getting drummed out of office.
The Times notes that State Sen. Kathy Bernier is the "only one of Wisconsin’s 82 Republican state legislators" who has been willing to combat head on the lie that Trump won. In November, Bernier, who chairs the State Senate elections committee, asked Wisconsin Legislature attorneys to look into whether the election could be legally decertified. They said, no. In December, she called on the Assembly to end its investigation into 2020. In January, Bernier announced her retirement at the end of the year.
“I have no explanation as to why legislators want to pursue voter-fraud conspiracy theories that have not been proven,” Bernier told the Times. “They should not do that. It’s dangerous to our democratic republic."
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