Trump has terrible week in Wisconsin
Clinton to propose $10 bln manufacturing investment
MADISON, Wisconsin, April 1, (Agencies): Donald Trump took a battering this week in advance of Tuesday’s critical Wisconsin primary election, a contest where the Republican electorate could stall his march toward the party’s 2016 presidential nomination and boost the likelihood of a bitter convention fight this summer with Ted Cruz, the ultraconservative first-term Texas senator.
Trump, whose campaign had gained steam for months even as he did and said things that would have derailed a more conventional Republican candidate, ran into a storm of powerful opposition in Midwestern Wisconsin where a key poll shows him trailing Cruz by 10 percentage points, a survey that showed him leading by that much a month ago.
Even before he arrived in the state this week, 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.
Much of the subsequent trouble was of the Trump campaign’s own making. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, was charged with 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.
“Part of it is just the Wisconsin nice. We don’t take too kindly to people who act the way Donald Trump acts,” said state Rep Jim Steineke, the Republican majority leader in the Wisconsin Assembly.
Among mainstream Republicans , Trump has created fears of a permanent split in the party and Cruz was playing on those worries.
“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,” said the Texan who has alienated most of Senate colleagues.
Trump’s view is rosier for his own campaign: “If we win Wisconsin, it’s pretty much over.”
Delegates
If Cruz sweeps all the delegates in Wisconsin, Trump will need to win 57 percent of the remaining delegates in other states to collect the 1,237 he needs to clinch the nomination. So far, he has won 48 percent of all delegates awarded.
Wisconsin offers 42, putting it in the middle of the pack of primary prizes. But the state’s stature in Republican politics and its position on the calendar — no other state votes until April 19 — have elevated its importance. Though the state has voted for Democrats in the past several presidential elections, it boasts prominent national party leaders including Walker, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
Meanwhile, Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, met in Washington Thursday with the chairman of the Republican National Committee, as tensions ran high between the candidate and his party.
Although Trump had previously announced he would be in Washington for meetings, his visit to the RNC, where he met with its chairman, Re- ince Priebus, came as a surprise.
It followed an announcement two days ago by Trump that he would refuse to support any candidate but himself as nominee in the race for the White House.
He also announced Tuesday that he no longer felt bound by the commitment he made in September to respect the outcome of the primaries and not run as an independent in November if he does not receive the party nomination.
“I have been treated very unfairly. By basically the RNC, the Republican party, the establishment,” Trump said in an interview on CNN aired Tuesday.
Details were slow to emerge about his meeting with Priebus, but CNN, citing Republican sources, reported that the discussion was about convention rules and the delegate process.
In related development, US Demo- cratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Friday will propose a $10 billion investment in partnerships to encourage the growth of the US manufacturing sector as part of a national push to discourage outsourcing in the industry.
The proposal would work with a broader campaign to encourage companies to build and expand their US manufacturing operations.
Clinton is slated to roll out the proposal on Friday in Syracuse, New York, ahead of the state’s nominating contest on April 19.
New York has long been a hub of the manufacturing industry, but suffered significant declines in the sector in recent years. From 2000-2008, upstate New York alone lost nearly 105,000 manufacturing jobs, according to the state government.