Watch Wisconsin.
That’s the gist of a Christian Science Monitor report which notes that if Mitt Romney does as well as expected in the Wisconsin primary this could finally, decisively, definitively wrap up the 2012 Republican nomination for the former Massachusetts Governor. The reasons why:
While Rick Santorum’s campaign isn’t a goner, even if he loses, Wisconsin stands out as a potential turning point in the national election for two reasons. First, the Badger State primary marks the moment when many elected Republicans across the country decided at last to cast their lot with Mr. Romney’s campaign. Second, many Republican officials have lately stopped talking about “who” will be the party’s nominee and are preoccupied instead with “how” to win against President Obama in November, including identifying which states (Wisconsin, perhaps?) are really up for grabs.
AND:
But why now, ahead of this particular primary? Wisconsin, the thinking goes, could be the leading edge of a knockout blow. Several states where the GOP electorate is more moderate, mainly in the Northeast, will hold their nominating contests in April: Maryland and Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, followed by Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania on April 24. These favor Romney. In Pennsylvania, Mr. Santorum’s home state and a place he has vowed to triumph, recent polling shows the race to be a dead heat.
There’s more to the Wisconsin contest than its spot in the calendar, however. Party leaders sense that this state, which hasn’t given its electoral votes to a Republican presidential contender since President Ronald Reagan’s bid for a second term, might be in play come November. They know they have two of the GOP’s brightest young stars to help carry the GOP message in Wisconsin – native sons Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Paul Ryan, both of whom gave their endorsements to Romney in recent days.
AND:
Whether Wisconsin really is a swing state may depend on the outcome of the state’s high-profile gubernatorial recall slated for June 5, with a labor-driven coalition attempting to unseat Republican Gov. Scott Walker over his rollback of labor rights. Republicans spin this recall battle as a dry run for how the fight for Wisconsin might go in November….
At this point, polls suggest the state is Democrats’ to lose. A USA/Today Gallup poll released Monday shows President Obama with a 51 percent to 42 percent lead over Romney among registered voters in 12 swing states, of which Wisconsin makes up 7 percent of the sample. In a March Purple Poll of several swing state groupings, “heartland” voters in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa preferred Obama over Romney, 50 percent to 44 percent. Both polls had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
But those margins aren’t imposing and, as the RNC’s Mr. Priebus notes, President George W. Bush came within 5,000 votes of taking Wisconsin in 2000 and within 11,000 votes in 2004. Obama locked up the state by a massive 400,000-vote margin in 2008.
The White House is paying attention to Wisconsin, trying to assess whether Obama might be vulnerable there. Vice President Joe Biden, in an extended interview for Sunday’s edition of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” clobbered Romney for his positions on foreign policy and for being “out of touch” with the American middle class. That Mr. Biden would deliver such a drubbing is not exactly news, but where did he make CBS’s camera crews schlep to for the interview? Milwaukee, naturally.
Meanwhile, it is fitting that despite the fact he now has virtually no chance to win the nomination Rick Santorum is still in the race in the badger state.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.