When Scott Walker's 70-day presidential bid died with a whimper, Walker called on other GOP candidates to "follow his lead" so that the remaining candidate(s) could take out Donald Trump. No one did follow his lead...at least not voluntarily.
Now Walker is saying that the Republicans need Trump in order to win Wisconsin.
Despite Walker's feasting on his Trump waffles, the establishment GOP in Wisconsin isn't ready to cede the battle just quite yet.
Ever since Walker dropped out of the race, Trump has been enjoying a constant, but slowly dwindling, lead in state polls. The most recent Marquette University poll shows Trump holding onto a ten point lead.
However, an analysis by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reveals that Trumps lead is not solid across the state. In fact, Trump is in big trouble in the red counties that surround Milwaukee, which also has one of the nation's highest turn out for Republicans, which could spell trouble for Trump:
Nationally, his image within the party has grown more positive over time. But he has been polling more poorly in Wisconsin than he has in most other places.
Trump gets his highest Republican ratings in Wisconsin — plus 21 — in the more rural north and west. That region was defined broadly for this analysis, comprising 35 counties and four different media markets: Wausau, La Crosse, and those counties that fall within two Minnesota TV markets, Duluth and the Twin Cities.
The other region where Trump gets positive ratings from Republicans is the 16-county Green Bay media market, where 47% view him favorably and 39% percent view him unfavorably.
But Trump’s ratings look nothing like that to the south.
He has a net favorability among Republicans of minus 10 in the Madison media market; minus 15 in the outer counties of the Milwaukee media market; minus 28 in Milwaukee County; and minus 39 in the “WOW counties” (Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington), the most Republican turf in the state.
The Trump map — strongest up north, weakest in the Milwaukee ring counties — is the exact opposite of the traditional winning formula in contested Republican primaries in Wisconsin.
The analysis contributes the establishment's stronghold on the fact that this region is better educated and more affluent than other parts of the state and that the Republicans in this state are far more establishment types than the rest of the state. Contrary to the first part and explaining the second part is that this part of the state also has the strongest presence of squawk radio, which has long been echoing the GOP establishment's anti-Trump cadence.
In other words, despite being more educated and better well off, this region of Wisconsin has produced an inordinately high percentage of Republican sheeple who are easily influenced by the GOP propagandists.
Conservatives in the state that are outside of the influence of the WGOP-AM stations are realizing that the GOP as a whole has failed them. Sadly, they have yet haven't had the insight that the GOP was designed to fail them.
The Wisconsin primary is April 5th.