Ben Wikler: We’ve Beat GOP Extremism Before — And We’ll Do It Again in 2024

By Ben Wikler

The Republican National Convention this week has been a week-long infomercial pitching a vision of America that has very little to do with people’s actual lives. Republicans are describing a country where Americans hide in constant fear of their neighbors, where only a strongman like Donald Trump can save them from carnage and economic collapse, a country where Democrats are a threat to the very foundations of the Republic. 

If you’ve been watching, it can be a little surreal. These same Republicans spew their vitriol and then walk out of the convention hall and go out to lovely dinners in beautiful downtown Milwaukee. 

Even more surreal is the fact that there is, indeed, a threat to American democracy afoot—and it’s coming from the very party Milwaukee is hosting this week. You can see it all written out in Project 2025. And you can see that it’s no empty threat by looking at what Republicans have done when they’ve gained power in states like the one hosting this convention. 

Here in Wisconsin, we’ve spent more than a decade battling back a Republican deluge of extremist politicians and policies. We endured more than a decade under a hyper-partisan GOP gerrymander that split communities down the middle and silenced voters in the name of Republican power. And we experienced the reign of Scott Walker and the devastation he left in his wake: a decimation of collective bargaining rights, the neglect of critical infrastructure, and a wholesale defunding of our public schools.

Thanks to years of organizing and effort, we organized our way back to democracy here in Wisconsin. We won statewide races for Governor, Attorney General, and state Supreme Court. Now, finally, Wisconsin has new, fair legislative maps.  And we’re not about to let our state—or our country—slip again.

The Scott Walker era showed us here in Wisconsin what unchecked Republican domination looks like. But as bad as that period was in the Badger State, Donald Trump’s Project 2025 would be worse. 

Project 2025 is the extreme MAGA blueprint for Donald Trump’s second term. The plan is over 900 pages long and filled with the stuff of nightmares. With Project 2025 as a guide, Donald Trump will rip away reproductive freedom nationwide, consolidate power in his own Oval Office, give massive tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy and corporations, gut governmental checks and balances meant to keep him in check, end the Affordable Care Act, cut Social Security, and much more.

We’ve already spent years in Wisconsin picking up the pieces of Republican mismanagement and total disregard for our democracy and the basic functions of our government. It would take even longer to unravel the chaos and horrors unleashed by Donald Trump and Project 2025. And there are some scars that we’d never be able to erase if Trump gets his way. 

All of this was true long before this year’s RNC, and all of it will be true all the way through Election Day. That’s why this convention wasn’t a surprise—and it’s why we have to do everything in our power to prevent a second Donald Trump presidency. 

In a way, the only surprise was that national Republicans spent a week in Milwaukee. It’s no secret how the Republican Party feels about Milwaukee: here, they’ve bragged about suppressing Black and brown votes in Wisconsin’s most diverse city and admitted to using Milwaukee as a “punching bag”—not to be outdone by Donald Trump, who labeled Milwaukee a “horrible city” just weeks before this very convention.

But there’s a reason they chose Milwaukee, even if they loathe it: they know Wisconsin voters can decide this presidential election. That’s why it’s up to every Wisconsinite—and every American—who believes in freedom and democracy to redouble their efforts so we can defeat Donald Trump and Project 2025 at the ballot box in November. 

The only way forward in progress and in hope is to reelect President Biden and defeat Donald Trump once and for all. It’s to reelect Senator Baldwin here in Wisconsin so she can continue fighting for our freedoms. And it’s to elect Democrats in the far reaches of Wisconsin under our new fair legislative maps to give a voice to Wisconsinites who have been shut out of our government for far too long.

We know we can do it. We’ve overcome seemingly insurmountable odds in Wisconsin before. Here in the Badger State, we’re already hard at work to do it again—and this year, we’ll show why “Forward” is our state motto. And now, we’re calling on the rest of the nation to join us and protect our democracy.

Ben Wikler was elected chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin in June of 2019. Since then, he has led the party through a string of historic victories, including Wisconsin’s defeat of Trump in 2020, Governor Evers’ reelection in 2022, and two landmark state Supreme Court wins that delivered a progressive majority to the Court for the first time in 15 years.