Rhetoric heats up on trail as Wis. primary approaches

Associated Press

MADISON, Wis.

Tuesday’s Wisconsin presidential primary is emerging as a crucial lifeline for Republicans desperate to stop Donald Trump’s march to their party’s nomination. One of his worst weeks of the 2016 campaign is colliding with a state already skeptical of his brash brand of politics.

A big loss for Trump in Wisconsin would greatly reduce his chances of securing the delegates he needs to clinch the GOP nomination before July’s national convention. It also could offer new hope to rival Ted Cruz and outside groups that see Trump as a threat to the future of the Republican Party.

“I think the whole country is looking to Wisconsin right now to make a choice in this race, and I think the choice Wisconsin makes is going to have repercussions for a long time to come,” Cruz said Thursday in an interview with Milwaukee radio station WTMJ.

Trump’s view is rosier for his own campaign: “If we win Wisconsin, it’s pretty much over.”

But almost nothing has gone right for him since Wisconsin stepped into the primary spotlight.

Even before he arrived, Trump was skewered in interviews with a trio of Wisconsin’s influential conservative talk-radio hosts. On Tuesday, just hours before his first campaign stop, two-term Gov. Scott Walker threw his support behind Cruz, of Texas.

Much of the trouble that followed was of the Trump campaign’s own making. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, got slapped with a charge of simple battery for an altercation with a reporter. Then Trump was forced to walk back his assertion that women should be punished for getting abortions, a comment that managed to unite both sides of the abortion debate in fierce opposition to his statement.

“As soon as he stepped foot in Wisconsin, the mask finally came off,” said state Rep. Jim Steineke, the Republican majority leader in the Wisconsin Assembly. “Part of it is just the Wisconsin nice. We don’t take too kindly to people who act the way Donald Trump acts.”

Meanwhile, Ohio Gov. John Kasich seized an opportunity to blast Trump as unprepared for the presidency after the comments about abortion.

“Donald Trump is clearly not prepared to be president,” Kasich said at a news conference in New York. He argued that Trump “becomes unmoored” when pressed about his positions and then corrects himself, as Trump’s campaign did Wednesday.

Presidents, Kasich added, “don’t get do-overs.”

In the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton gave a spirited defense Thursday of her campaign proposals and her lead in her party’s primaries after she was disrupted by a group of Bernie Sanders supporters ahead of her home state’s primary.

A few minutes into Clinton’s remarks on the campus of Purchase College in Purchase, N.Y., about 20 Sanders supporters shouted, “If she wins, we lose,” and then began walking out. Clinton responded sharply, “The Bernie people came to say that. We’re very sorry you’re leaving,” as the crowd chanted, “I’m with her!”

The sharp exchange came ahead of Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary and this month’s vote in New York, where Clinton is favored because of her deep ties to the state.

Sanders was campaigning in Pittsburgh, ahead of Pennsylvania’s April 26 primary, joining activists with the United Steelworkers union and the letter carrier’s union to criticize Clinton’s past support of certain trade deals.