Wisconsin adults stepped up last week to end the campaign charade of Donald Trump. It was time to take the juvenile out of the game, and we did. But he’s not dead yet.
Wisconsin Republican, independents and crossover Democrats gave 62% of their votes to his opponents (Ted Cruz 48% and John Kasich 14%). They dumped Trump in his now unlikely Donald Quixote quest for the 1237 delegates needed for a Republican majority of delegates.
Trump built his campaign on his brand and on his leadership in the polls and in some of the early primaries. He was a “winner.” Now he is a loser, big time, in a key state. The air is out of the wind bag. His momentum just went the other way.
The lopsided defeat of Trump in Wisconsin means that the Republican nomination is almost certainly headed to the convention floor in Cleveland in July. That is not good territory for Trump, as he has never been a real Republican. He was a Democrat from 2001 to 2009.
This changed scenario doesn’t mean that Trump is going away.
Expect these tantrums from this “me first” candidate:
• He will insist that a plurality should be enough to win the nomination at the convention, even though the rules call for a majority.
• He will scream for Kasich to drop out because he is stealing “his delegates.”
• He will try to change the rules of the convention to his favor (so will the other candidates).
• He will mock, belittle and leak stories about Ted Cruz and his family. The campaign will get even uglier. He can’t help himself. His battle plan has always been personal attack. He is a vindictive human being.
• He will reverse his promise that he would support the eventual winner of the GOP nomination.
• If he loses out, he will run or threaten to run as a third party candidate. (He listed himself as an independent as 2011 and 2012.
What happened in Wisconsin is that voters finally got the full picture of how unprepared Trump is to be president. They saw up close that he is not emotionally or temperamentally presidential. The learned that he is a know-nothing on major policy issues. They grasped that his values, such as they are, are not in tune with theirs.
All his defects, shortcomings and obvious gaps in knowledge accumulated over the last several months of this tough, mean campaign. His own worst enemy, he just kept piling one stupid statement on top of another. He was fun for a while, but the full picture that emerged was not pretty.
Contributors to my blog and other sources stitched together 61 solid reasons why he is unfit for the Oval Office. As an example, number 61 was his claim that Medicare could save $300 billion if it negotiated for lower drug prices. His facts are so off as to be absurd. Medicare spends only $78 billion per year on drugs and the whole bill in the country for drugs is about $300 billion. He doesn’t do a stitch of homework before shooting from the lip. And this is a guy who has a staff.
The Fifth Congressional District in Wisconsin, which covers suburban Washington and Waukesha counties is one of the most rock-ribbed Republican districts in the country. It is a gauge of how Trump will do when the nomination decision goes to the convention floor full of rock-ribbed Republicans in three months.
Trump got 24% of the vote in Washington County and 22% in Waukesha County.
Finally, note to Cruz: Don’t get too giddy over your 48% in Wisconsin. Your smirk in your victory speech in Wisconsin was somewhat unwarranted. A lot of your votes were “Dump Trump” votes in a state with an open primary that allows cross-overs from every kind of voter.
