Donald Trump’s baseless claims of a rigged election are tearing Wisconsin Republicans apart.
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.
On election fraud, which remains a top issue for Republican primary voters, Kleefisch is attempting to walk the same line that many traditional Republicans are — focusing on voting restrictions that can be enacted for future elections, like banning ballot drop boxes, while hedging on what happened in 2020. After agreeing last year that Biden had won Wisconsin, Kleefisch dodged the question in a radio interview last week.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/20/wisconsin-republicans-trump-00010378