TRUMP’S BASE CLOAKS HIS CAMPAIGN IN MESSIANIC ZEAL
NEW LONDON, Wis. – Before Republicans sat down for their “Lincoln-Reagan-Trump” dinner late last month, they bowed their heads for a prayer centered squarely on November.
A local pastor began by saying “we pray for these upcoming elections” and asking God to be “with every ballot box or be with every voting station.” He hoped young people would see that “America needs their votes.”
Not long later, local conservative radio host Joe Giganti stood before the crowd of about 200 people and invoked God once more. He was direct.
“This isn’t really a battle of Republican versus Democrat. It’s not even a battle of conservative versus liberal. It’s a battle between good and evil, God and the devil,” Giganti said to cheers and whistles.
“And we must choose God.”
The remarks at a gathering of local Republicans in a rural Wisconsin town about 40 miles west of Green Bay reflected a snapshot of how some Republican base voters in this swing state view the rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump this November.
Trump still has a hill to climb in Wisconsin. Nearly 60% of voters view the former president as unfavorable, more than 120,000 Republican voters picked someone else in the April 2 presidential primary (including candidates that have already dropped out) and overall enthusiasm trails levels from four years ago.
But recent interviews show zeal for Trump within the grassroots of the Wisconsin GOP has not dampened.
In New London, guests dined in front of life-sized cardboard cutouts of Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Trump. They ate brownies festooned with Trump flags and entered a raffle for a “Trump 2024” shotgun with the words “Take America Back” printed under the gun’s loading port.
Those signs were on display again as Trump swept into Green Bay on April 2 for his first campaign stop of the election cycle in Wisconsin. There, Trump railed against Biden over his handling of illegal immigration and again dove into his signature issue: the 2020 election.
As if it was at a Packers home opener, the crowd loudly embraced his false claims that election malfeasance snatched a reelection victory from him.
“I’ll tell you, it’s pretty incredible the level of enthusiasm and support that people have for President Trump,” said Doug Reich, chairman of the Republican
Party of Brown County who attended the April 2 rally. “I was honestly taken aback a little bit by how many people braved the elements ... just to get in.”
The rally took place as the percentage of voters feeling “very enthusiastic” about voting this year has dropped from January 2020 to January 2024 by nearly 20 percentage points, according to data gathered by the Marquette University Law School poll.
The drop is largely driven by Democrats concerned about Biden’s appeal, poll director Charles Franklin said, and has increased since the president’s
State of the Union address. While voters in the camps of both major parties are struggling to match previous enthusiasm levels, supporters of Trump are farther ahead than those of Biden, he said.
“Broadly, that in terms of favorability towards Trump, Republicans were more favorable to him in January of 2020 than they are today. But his favorability, generally and with Republicans, has been improving over the last year,” Franklin said. “So, he’s not in terrible shape.