Ripon Wisconsin

The State Of The Republican Presidential Race On Independence Day!

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With about 7 weeks to the first Republican Presidential Primary Debate on August 23 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the state of the race is that Donald Trump is running away with the nomination, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis about thirty five points behind him, and everyone else in the dust, although Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Governor and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie each have at least a few percent of the vote.

DeSantis has become a total flop, and only Chris Christie has been willing to take on Trump in an organized fashion, with all others avoiding criticism.

It now seems as even if Trump is indicted two more times, which seems highly likely, and even if convicted, that the Republican Party is selling its soul to the twice impeached President who incited the January 6, 2021 US Capitol Insurrection.

This is very disturbing, and makes one wonder what future the party of Lincoln, TR, Ike, and Reagan has, with many, including this author and blogger, with the 170th anniversary of the founding of the party in Ripon, Wisconsin occurring in the summer of 2024, just as the party holds its convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin!

Wisconsin will be one of the major battlegrounds of the Presidential race, and the Midwest will be a key factor in the Electoral College, as the Democratic Party holds its convention in Chicago, Illinois!

First Republican Presidential Debate On Wednesday August 23 In Milwaukee

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The first Republican Presidential debate is set for Wednesday August 23 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the Republican National Convention will be held from July 15-18, 2024.

Wisconsin was the birthplace of the Republican Party in 1854 at Ripon, and the 170th anniversary of the party’s founding will be a moment of decision as to the future of the party that once had such luminaries as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan as its standard-bearers.

Whether Donald Trump will continue to dominate the Republican Party will determine if the party is on its last legs, meaning doomed to distinction.

Can Tim Scott, Chris Christie, or Chris Sununu save the party and its future, as they seem to be the “best” of a bad lot of potential nominees, but if they and others must follow through on a loyalty oath to back whoever the party nominee is, then the party is doomed!

Republican Party In Death Throes, Will NOT Recover, And New Conservative Party Needed!

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The Republican Party has existed since March 1854, when the first meeting of those opposed to slavery and its expansion met in Ripon, Wisconsin.

The party came to national power with the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

It has had its ups and downs, but gave us outstanding Presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush.

It has had its failed Presidents too, including the mediocre ones in the Gilded Age and the 1920s, and a flawed President, Richard Nixon, who, however, actually had some great accomplishments while sadly engaged in scandal that brought his downfall.

But never has the party been as corrupted and unethical as it has become under Donald Trump, with the vast majority of Republican officeholders and candidates for this upcoming Midterm Elections of 2022 chaining themselves to this Fascist authoritarian figure in a cult like atmosphere!

American democracy is endangered, as well as the rule of law, and those Republicans and conservatives who have been loyal to the long held conservative principles of the party must organize and strike out against the Republican traitors and seditionists and terrorists, and form a new conservative party as the alternative in a democratic system to the Democratic Party!

Republican Party, 168 Years Old Today, Undermined By Competing Factions, Some Of Them Extremist In Nature

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The Republican Party was born on this day in Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1854, 168 years ago.

The future of the party is in danger, due to these massive splits.

Among the members of these six groups below are the following:

Trumpism—including House members Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz; Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz; and Governors Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and Kristi Noem.

Anti Trumpism—including House members Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Anthony Gonzalez; Senators Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse; and Governors Larry Hogan, Charlie Baker, and Phil Scott.

Christian Right—Mike Pence, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee

Libertarian conservatives—Senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul; Congressman Thomas Massie

Neoconservatives—George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Bolton

Moderates—Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Charlie Baker, Larry Hogan, Phil Scott, Chris Sununu

The hope for the long range is that the Anti Trumpists and Moderates will prevail, as otherwise, the Republican Party is an authoritarian, Fascist oriented party, abandoning the principles of the party at its founding!

Two Different Directions: Wisconsin State Republican Party And Nevada State Republican Party

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The internal battle over the future of the Republican Party is in full swing, as we come up to the 160th anniversary of the Republican Party in Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1854, which actually took place on March 20. with a formal organization in Jackson, Michigan, on July 6.

For a long time, the Ripon Society has existed as an organization for “liberal,” mainstream Republicans, but of course, there is no such thing anymore known as “liberal” Republicanism. Even those who might consider themselves “liberal,” avoid use of that term like a plague!

The Wisconsin GOP, which once included “Mr. Progressive” Robert La Follette, Sr., and his brilliant sons Robert La Follette, Jr. and Philip La Follette, now, however, has become an extremist group on the far right, under Governor Scott Walker and Senator Ron Johnson, and the proposal is to add to their state party documents the concept of the right of the state to promote “secession’ if felt necessary, a sign of the old, ugly language that led to the Civil War and the loss of two thirds of a million men in combat, the greatest single tragedy in the nation’s history!

At the same time, the Nevada State Republican Party has made the decision to remove from its platform for 2014 two issues that the Christian Right has been promoting since their rise in the party apparatus nationwide since the late 1970s—abortion and gay rights and marriage. No longer will the party promote government intervention in the lives of women and their personal decisions about their bodies and reproductive rights. And no longer will they get in the way of a person’s happiness, as to his or her basic human rights, including marriage, and the right to one’s sexual orientation without any discrimination by government!

In the long run, what Nevada Republicans are doing will, if pursued elsewhere, lead to a long term revival of the GOP, while if Wisconsin is followed, it is the death knell and demise of the party of Lincoln, TR, and Ike!

159th Anniversary Of Founding Of Republican Party: Not A Celebration!

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The Republican Party, which gave us Abraham Lincoln, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, William Seward in the years of the 1850s and 1860s; which gave us Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, Sr, George Norris, William Borah, Hiram Johnson in the 1900s-1940s; which gave us Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr,, George Romney in the 1950s-1960s; and which gave us Mark Hatfield, Charles Mathias, Charles Percy, Howard Baker, Bob Dole, Gerald Ford in the 1970s–1990s, reached its 159th birthday today.

The Republican Party began as an anti slavery expansion party, with elements of abolitionism also present when the party began on this day in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854.

It became the party of civil rights legislation, three civil rights constitutional amendments, progressive legislation, and supportive of much bipartisan legislation with Democrats in the New Deal and Great Society eras.

Of course, they had their evil elements, including McCarthyism, nativism, and tying themselves to organized religious influences that wished to take America backward, but until the past few years, they always had redeeming values in many ways, and would often denounce the extremists in their midst.

But now the Republican Party has become a party dominated by Tea Party radicals, who promote racism, misogyny, nativism, concern only to promote the welfare of the wealthy, and willingness to engage in foreign wars that have cost us dearly in treasure and loss of life and limb!

The Republican Party is no longer, in any way, reflective of its past, and in fact, insults its honorable, respectable history, sullying the names of its heroes and champions over a century and a half!

This is a tragedy of massive proportions, and the name “Republican” should be co-opted by the true moderates who are sitting by, watching the destruction going on, and holding their heads in their hands, ashamed that the name has been so damaged by reckless, anarchistic haters of the federal government! The party which fought the Civil War to uphold the Union is now more like the secessionist Democrats of that era!