The problem with Republicans …

… is its dues-paying members!

Pogo, the philosophizing opossum in Walt Kelly’s classic comic strip, famously said, “We have met the problem and he is us.” In the same vein, the problem with our political parties today is its dues-paying members — always a tiny fraction of the voting public.

That reality slapped us full in the face a couple weekends ago at the Wisconsin Republican Convention in beautiful La Crosse. Party leaders, national and state, are urging members to vote absentee on the theory that  two weeks of early voting is too much to make up in 12 hours — as our losses in 2020 and 2022 and this Spring proved. Didn’t faze convention delegates: they demanded election day voting, only!

In the first national tests of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade, pro-abortion defeated all nine months pro-life in our state supreme court race and in red states like Kansas. Senator Ron Johnson, the most senior of Republican elected officials, made the case in La Crosse for compromise in a sincere and closely reasoned speech. Made no never mind to the delegates in La-la La Crosse: they took the hard line. 

We have our own bubble

No surprise the WisPolitics poll of delegates showed 53% of the them preferred Trump to 34% for DeSantis. Although unscientific, seemed about right to this observer. Delegates even tried to censure Assembly Speaker Robin Vos for criticizing Trump who, after all, is not (yet) our 2024 nominee. They were stymied only by the chair’s technical reading of convention rules. No one suggested Trump be upbraided for dissing Vos. 

The Marquette University Law School Poll, on the other hand, surveys a representative sample of everyone who votes Republican, dues-paying or not. This month’s survey told a different story; only 31% of them want Trump; 30% favor DeSantis. Put the two head to head and DeSantis thumps Trump 57% to 41%. That is astounding! Furthermore, Trump loses to Joe Biden 52% to 43% while DeSantis is within the margin of error.

This disconnect owes to the kind of people who go to conventions held in cavernous auditoriums on a sunny day in June instead of engaging in healthy hobbies, like diving in submersibles to view the Titanic wreck. They’re the party’s heavy breathers — many of them — the kind of people who call the other party “Demon-rats” and post apocalyptic warnings that Joe Biden has a secret plan to sell Ozaukee County to the Chinese. Insecure mediocrities who have never been elected to anything, compromise at nothing, and need to prove they are more Republican than thou. Start the show trials!

Maybe why realistic Republicans like Tommy Thompson, Scott McCallum, Becky Kleefisch, and Scott Walker were no shows. As were U.S. Reps. Mike Gallagher and Scott Fitzgerald. It’s like Madison school board, that way. No accomplished business person will run any more.

This weekend, Milwaukee County Republicans are paying big bucks to hear Trumped-up election denier Kari Lake, the sore loser from Arizona.

Two other battleground states are in trouble

Georgia’s Republican party is so dysfunctional that Gov. Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the attorney general and several other state executives boycotted their own convention. “Many at the convention continued to assert that elections in the state were rigged and Republican leaders somehow had a hand in alleged fraud,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Michigan Republicans controlled all levels of state government from 2011 to 2019. Now they are powerless for the first time in 40 years,” Joey Cappelletti reported for the Associated Press. He quoted Dave Trott, a former GOP congressman: 

“Trump largely is the reason why the Michigan Republican Party is dead.” Last year, Trump’s endorsed candidates were among the loudest in repeating his unfounded claims that the 2020 election was rigged. [They were] overwhelming defeated, including Tudor Dixon, who lost by over 10 percentage points to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. 

— Associated Press

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Democrats are no better. They nominated Mandela Barnes, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, after all. Which is why we may well get the ballot from hell: Donald Trump v. Joe Biden redux.

Who can break out?