Voters want real conservative
In 1992, when Bill Clinton ended this country's shameful history of denying the presidency to people who played the saxophone, America felt renewed. In beating George H.W. Bush (albeit with Ross Perot's help), Clinton had tossed aside the old guard and ushered in a new era of youthful enthusiasm. After all, Clinton was the president who, following his election, was asked on television whether he wore boxers or briefs and answered as flippantly as if he had been asked about Egypt's gross domestic product.
During the election, young people ate it up. Most important, Clinton's regular-guy style appealed to one voter who was voting for the first time in 1992: Me.
At one time, I was the perfect representative of the old maxim (misattributed to pretty much every famous orator of the past couple of centuries) that he who is not a liberal when he is 20 has no heart and whoever is not a conservative when he is 30 has no brain. (I finally came around when I realized FICA wasn't the name of a new Pearl Jam album.)
Even today, ideological transformations are happening before our eyes. Take the 2018 Wisconsin Senate race, where Republicans have a strong chance of picking up the seat currently held by Democrat Tammy Baldwin. In 2012, Baldwin was elected while clinging to Barack Obama's coattails; in 2018, she will have no such boost.
This is why a gaggle of Republicans already are positioning themselves for a run at Baldwin. And two of the primary competitors are new not only to politics, but to the Republican Party itself.
Back in 2000, Kevin Nicholson served as head of the College Democrats of America, which is a fairly non-traditional start to a career in Republican politics. Nicholson, who has since become a U.S. Marine veteran and businessman, actually addressed the 2000 Democratic National Convention, promoting both legal abortion and the nomination of Vice President Al Gore. Now that he's floating his name as a possible GOP senator, Nicholson claims he no longer holds these views, and frequently mentions his life as a Democrat in his speeches.
Ironically, a group with financial ties to Nicholson's supporters recently attacked Green Bay educator and potential candidate Nicole Schneider for being insufficiently conservative. Schneider (no relation to me, but given that she's part of the Schneider trucking empire, I'd be happy to take a DNA test), has gotten heat for her pesky habit of taking to social media to either praise Democratic politicians or criticize Republicans. While her skepticism over Donald Trump's candidacy certainly isn't a deal-breaker, she should be ready to explain her apparent enthusiasm for Obamacare.
And that is particularly problematic when the race features strong conservatives who don't carry baggage from previous Democratic flirtations. If state Sen. Leah Vukmir of Wauwatosa or state Rep. Dale Kooyenga of Brookfield enter the race, voters can choose candidates who won't have to waste time explaining their conservative credentials to primary voters. Each of those state legislators can boast a list of conservative accomplishments as long as their arm.
While it is true Trump won Wisconsin in November, it also is important to note that he badly lost the Republican primary the previous April. In primaries, Wisconsin Republicans have a very acute manure-tolerance meter. And while it's too early to rule out either Schneider or Nicholson, they better be ready to spend a lot of money convincing GOP voters that they now possess Republican brains.