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Wisconsin Open Thread
Via CNN, as of 7:50 PM PT — with approximately 60 percent of the vote counted — Senator Ted Cruz leads Donald Trump by 50.7 to 32.8 percent.
Published in PoliticsTed Cruz won the Wisconsin Republican primary Tuesday, according to a CNN projection, boosting his effort to blunt Donald Trump and moving the party closer to a historic contested convention. Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, won the Democratic primary, CNN projects, inflicting a tough loss on front-runner Hillary Clinton and racking up his sixth win of the past seven state contests.
As a Mormon from Wisconsin, this makes me very proud.
Pragmatic conservatives and libertarians and conservatarians have held their noses and voted for Dole, McCain, Romney, etc. It’s time for establishment types to hold their noses and vote for Cruz.
Never Hillary- Never Trump- NEVER tyranny.
Cruz apparently did better in more densely populated parts of Wisconsin. Trump support came from the most rural parts.
Obviously some of this has to do with the general stereotypes about Trump voters, but some of this may simply be an information deficit. As we have been told on many occasions, in primaries ground game matters. It’s a lot harder to get volunteers out to knock on a lot of doors in places with low population density.
I’m certain this is true. I have to work really hard to get news from Madison and Milwaukee. We are in the Twin Cities market. That big yellow spot can hear Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling without having to seek it out. So Trump’s media profile would have been a lot higher in rural areas.
I’m not sure what happened in Pierce County, the gray spot on the west. It’s a pretty sparse except for UWRF at the northwest corner. St. Croix County, just north of it has been pretty important to Republicans the last few years and is one of the fastest growing counties in the state.
Hmmm. Cruz did well in the German Catholic half of the state. Interesting.
And a Norwegian Lutheran strip on the west bleeding over from MN?
?
Is this not a bit of avengment for Walker? I recall his parting comments at the closing of his campaign referred to the reasonable messages from serious candidates being drowned out by the reality TV star. His clown show was sucking the oxygen out the real issue discussions with the base by an attention deficit addled media looking for the ratings.
I say Walker returned the favor to the “deal maker” who fails to do his homework on those pesky details that make a difference on the ground.
Cruz earned this win for being able to moving on his feet. I mean seriously did anyone think that Cruz would win a staid blue state like Wisconsin even a month ago?
Twin Cities bedroom communities. That doesn’t surprise me.
I think the best case for Cruz is if he goes into the convention:
Then he can make a strong argument that while Trump won the early contests when the field was divided, once the race narrowed down to 2 (technically 3 but Kasich doesn’t really count) he clearly bested Trump mano-a-mano.
Youbetchya
I’ve just been stuck for a while on how well Wisconsin conservatives have it together in comparison to the lot we’ve got here in Virginia. If Virginia had it together half so well three important close races in the last three years would have gone differently. It’s just inexcusable.
I literally found WI talk radio by accident trying to get traffic reports. I don’t usually listen to talk radio, especially in my car — that’s my time to listen to classical music and spend time with my own thoughts. And yet somehow, these people got me interested in the minutiae of the state budget, the train wreck that is the Milwaukee County board, and so on…
I’d say this proved to be Walker’s revenge in a big way… and if Cruz can adapt elsewhere as well as he did in WI, it’s a good sign.
Beautiful circular logic.
Not really. The statement to which I was responding was:
I don’t accept the premise. Are you telling me that if we had a one-day 50-state Republican primary with all 17(?) original Republican candidates, that the “overwhelming” majority of the votes would have gone to Cruz or Trump?
I love talk radio and am always game to listen to new local hosts that are not nationally syndicated, using I Heart Radio. So somebody tell me where to find Sykes and Belling and anybody else that’s good out of Wisconsin.
You can pull complete podcasts of Mark Bellings show from Itunes or his website (belling.com), for 24 hours after each show.
His style on the local show is a little more …energetic than it is when he co-hosts for Rush.
Sykes is at http://www.wtmj.com/charlie-sykes and at rightwisconsin.com. I think you can get Jay Weber through I Heart Radio too — he’s the same station locally as Belling, as I recall.
Weber has the morning show on WISN, Belling has the 3PM-6PM slot. Vicki McKenna has the mid-day slot. I believe they’re all on I heart.
Nice. Now you set up a nice big straw man.
By the way when all those other people were in the race, which 2 candidates consistently ran 1 through 3 in getting votes?
His show is podcast on iTunes again.