Christian Schneider on The Donald:

Up until this week, Trump had been a tsunami, gathering size and strength as he moved closer to the Republican nomination. A Trump nomination would drown the party’s chances of winning the presidency, keeping the U.S. Senate and could even put Republicans’ historic majority in the U.S. House in play. Clinton couldn’t have planned it better herself.

But then Wisconsin happened.

On Tuesday, like parents scolding a young child, Republican voters in Wisconsin sent Trump to sit in the corner to think about the damage he had done. Ted Cruz’s landslide victory in Tuesday’s primary deeply wounded Trump’s chances of earning enough delegates to win the nomination at the party’s convention in July and exposed Trump’s dreadful lack of judgment for voters in upcoming states. As New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza put it on Twitter, Wisconsinites are now the GOP’s “designated drivers.”

In the days leading up to Tuesday’s primary, pundits had been saying Trump imploded in Wisconsin, which drove his negatives higher and fueled his flaccid showing. But this is wrong. Trump, in fact, behaved in Wisconsin the same way he had in every other state. In the past two weeks, he was just as boorish, poorly informed and vulgar as he has been for the previous year, only this time, he ran up against two weeks of uninterrupted coverage in a state where conservatives can spot a phony.

Perhaps the worst sideshow in Trump’s parade of cluelessness through Wisconsin was attacking Gov. Scott Walker, for whom conservatives have spent five years walking over hot coals to defend. At one point, Trump even rapped Walker for not having raised taxes to give to schools and highways — which is a bit like strolling into a Weight Watchers meeting chowing down on a double Whopper with cheese. Often, Trump would use anti-Walker facts and figures provided by Wisconsin Democrats; when Republicans heard him blame Walker for phony state “deficits,” they likely had flashbacks to the union protests of 2011.

To his credit, Cruz took advantage of other candidates dropping out of the field, quickly gathering their support. But Cruz’s support is still milquetoast among state GOP voters; it remains to be seen how much of the Cruz vote was “stop Trump” and how much was real enthusiasm.

Cruz has a 58% approval rating among Wisconsin Republicans. Compare that to the 84% approval enjoyed by Scott Walker and Paul Ryan’s 75% approval. In fact, many Wisconsin voters may have simply voted for Cruz thinking it was the best way to get to an open convention where the wildly popular Paul Ryan could step in and become the party’s nominee.

But all those machinations are for another day. For now, Wisconsin can take pride in being the state that stood athwart the tide and yelled “Stop!”

On Tuesday, Wisconsin Republicans slapped Donald Trump with a restraining order — now it’s up to the remaining states to enforce it.

William F. Buckley Jr., perhaps the only person in American history to use “athwart” in a sentence, was no fan of Trump, as you know.

Trump’s bizarre on-the-stump behavior is apparently making an increasing number of people wonder how serious he really is in running. Stephanie Cegielski, formerly of the Make America Great super-PAC, wrote …

You can give Trump the biggest gift possible if you are a Trump supporter: stop supporting him.

He doesn’t want the White House. He just wants to be able to say that he could have run the White House. He’s achieved that already and then some. If there is any question, take it from someone who was recruited to help the candidate succeed, and initially very much wanted him to do so.

… which made Richard Zombeck conclude:

Donald Trump does not want to be president. In fact, he never wanted to be president. His entire campaign has been a long con and a ruse to strengthen his brand and feed his ego. ..

So let’s assume that all of that is true. Donald Trump can’t just quit. After all, he’s Donald Trump. The next logical step would be to take a fall — possibly losing the nomination by a small margin. But again, if you’re Donald Trump you don’t lose. If you’re Donald Trump and want to get out while still maintaining your brand and your dignity, you play the long game and come out looking like a victim. In a sense, you spin it so that your supporters think you’re so accurate in your assessment of the world that it frightens the establishment into shutting you down — you’re that powerful.

Over the course of the last week, Trump has made headlines and drawn attention by doing and saying things that are completely contrary to what anyone would consider sane.

Trump’s conversation with Chris Matthews on MSNBC about abortion was just the beginning. During the interview he told Matthews that women who seek abortion should be punished — a stance even the hardliners in the GOP think is preposterous. Not to mention, women are the largest demographic in this country. There is no path to nomination without their support. Why would anyone alienate them?

Speaking of women, Trump completely fumbled the issue of his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was criminally charged for an altercation with a reporter. Rather than remain impartial or simply fire the staffer, Trump instead impugned the character of the reporter who was manhandled by Lewandowski.

Later that week while speaking at an event in Wisconsin, Trump told the audience that the Geneva Conventions hinder our efforts. The Geneva Conventions are made up of four treaties, most of which cover the humane treatment of enemy combatants and civilians.

“The problem,” Trump said, “is we have the Geneva Conventions, all sorts of rules and regulations, so the soldiers are afraid to fight. We can’t waterboard, but they can chop off heads. I think we’ve got to make some changes.” Trump also suggested that South Korea and Japan be allowed access to nuclear weapons, a suggestion that deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said would be “catastrophic.”

“The entire premise of American foreign policy as it relates to nuclear weapons for the past 70 years has been focused on preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional states,” Rhodes said.

Trump also said he would not be opposed to using nuclear weapons in the Middle East or in Europe, during the above-mentioned interview with Chris Matthews. …

Adding whipped cream to this well-crafted sundae of incompetence and ignorance, Trump called in to a conservative Wisconsin radio show and blasted Gov. Scott Walker.

But you had a $2.2 billion budget deficit and the schools were going begging and everything was going begging because he [Walker] didn’t want to raise taxes because he was going to run for president. So instead of raising taxes he cut back on schools, he cut back on highways, cut back on a lot of things. And that’s why…Wisconsin has a problem.

The host of the show, Charlie Sykes, is probably one of the most influential voices in Wisconsin’s talk radio arena. Sykes is also so strongly opposed to Trump that he’s vowed never to support him in any election. This is clearly something Trump had to have known going into the interview. It’s hard to believe he didn’t.

The cherry on the aforementioned sundae? Wisconsin is home of 42 delegates. All of which are up for grabs and could potentially put Trump closer to the nomination. Rather than appear himself, he sent Sarah Palin. One more time: He sent Sarah Palin. The Huffington Post reported:

Palin’s speech at a Republican gathering in Milwaukee  fell flat and earned little applause from about 750 attendees, according to the Journal Times. The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker reported that Palin got some laughs when she said, “Trump talks rationally.”

And in that same speech—the one in which she claims that Trump talks rationally—she said this about Trump’s opponents:

What the heck are you thinking, candidates? What the heck are you thinking when you’re actually asking for more immigrants — even illegal immigrants, welcoming them in.  Even inducing and seducing them with gift baskets: “Come on over the border and here’s a gift basket of teddy bears and soccer balls.”

Trump is no dummy and is not known for making stupid mistakes. Yes, he’s brash, uncouth, and maybe even ignorant on many issues, but he is not stupid.

Trump started the layout’s role of victim on Fox News last week. On Friday during a phone interview, Donald Trump, when asked about his comments on MSNBC, said, “You really ought to hear the whole thing. I mean, this is a long convoluted question. This was a long discussion, and they just cut it out. And, frankly, it was extremely — it was really convoluted.”

MSNBC quickly responded with a statement, saying, “The town hall interview with Donald Trump was taped in advance and then aired in its entirety. Absolutely no part of the exchange between Trump and Chris Matthews was edited out.”

Even Chris Wallace, during a “Fox News Sunday“ interview, asked Trump, “Are you in the process of blowing your campaign for president?” …

Republican strategist Cheri Jacobus, who had met with Trump about becoming their communications director, confirms most of this, telling the National Review:

I believe Trump senses he is in over his head and doesn’t really want the nomination. He wanted to help his brand and have fun, but not to be savaged by the Clintons if he’s the candidate. He wouldn’t mind falling short of a delegate majority, losing the nomination, and then playing angry celebrity victim in the coming years.

What began as a con will end as a con. Trump will continue to make bombastic, ludicrous and inane comments, proving to the media—who are all too eager to give him all the attention he wants—that he is wholly unqualified for the job. Other republicans will chastise him for the things that he says, proving to his followers that he is being targeted by an establishment that is afraid of him. Trump will walk away unscathed, his brand strengthened and his dignity intact. He will be the guy who nearly became president, but was too much for people to take. In many ways and on many levels nothing could be more accurate.

As a former panelist on “Sunday Insight with Charlie Sykes,” now that the New York Times has written about Sykes I guess I can say I knew him when, or more accurately before:

Charlie Sykes, a popular talk radio host here and leader of the “Stop Trump” movement, had spent months hammering Donald J. Trump on his show, calling him a “whiny, thin-skinned bully” and dismissing his supporters as “Trumpkins.”

So Mr. Sykes was surprised when the Trump campaign reached out on Easter Sunday to ask if the billionaire-reality-star-turned-presidential front-runner could come on his show.

The 17-minute interview last week was contentious and combative, with Mr. Sykes pressing Mr. Trump to apologize for comments he has made denigrating women, calling him a 12-year-old playground tormentor, and lamenting that he had failed to introduce the bombastic New Yorker to Wisconsin’s “tradition of civility and decency.”

Later in the week, as Mr. Trump crossed the state, he seemed to acknowledge the power of Wisconsin’s talk radio culture, which has been an anti-Trump force in the state, by railing aloud against it for deceiving voters.

“In certain areas — the city areas — I’m not doing well,” Mr. Trump told voters in Racine, Wis., bemoaning his lack of support on talk radio. “I’m not doing well because nobody knows my message. They were given misinformation.”

Mr. Sykes, along with a handful of other local talk radio hosts, has spent his mornings criticizing and castigating Mr. Trump over the airwaves. And if Mr. Trump loses the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday, he will have Mr. Sykes and his merry band of talkers partly to blame.

In a nominating contest that has exposed fissures in the Republican Party, Wisconsin’s conservative talk radio apparatus remains remarkably united in at least one belief — their deep and utter dislike for Mr. Trump, who for months has been the focus of their fiery attacks.

“Can someone win without talk radio?” asked Mr. Sykes, during a commercial break from his show. “Yes, theoretically. Except no one has.”

Wisconsin’s conservative talk radio has long played an outsize role in a state whose position in the Republican primary calendar has now given it heightened status in the nominating process.

When Mr. Walker, who ended his own presidential bid earlier this year by offering a pointed rebuke of Mr. Trump, endorsed Senator Ted Cruz on Tuesday, he did so by calling into Mr. Sykes’s show. And the week before, Mr. Cruz kicked off his Wisconsin primary bid in a friendly interview with Mr. Sykes.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, has found himself under near constant fire from the conservative talk radio hosts that dominate the southern part of the state, including the three counties that include parts of Milwaukee — Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington — that are among the most conservative in Wisconsin, and where Mr. Trump is struggling the most.

The most popular conservative talk show hosts here — Mr. Sykes, Jeff Wagner of WTMJ, and Mark Belling, Vicki McKenna and Jay Weber of WISN — are united in their disdain for Mr. Trump, with Jerry Bader, a radio personality at WTAQ in Green Bay, rounding out the group.

“The thing that’s been unique in this presidential race is, for some reason, the three who work here — Jay, Vicki and myself — and our competitors, Charlie and Jeff Wagner, all seem to despise Trump,” Mr. Belling said in an interview. “We all just kind of came to this conclusion independently. I think it’s just that we’re not as stupid as some of the people that are falling for Trump’s crap.”

In Mr. Belling, Mr. Trump has found an antagonist who is just as bellicose as the real estate billionaire himself. In his broadcast on Monday, Mr. Belling called Mr. Trump “the biggest wussy of all time,” “a big crybaby,” and a “sissy,” before turning his attention to the campaign team and declaring: “His staff are probably just a bunch of butt kissers.”

And that was just in the first hour.

“It seems to me that if you are an intelligent, thinking conservative who cares about issues, you’d be mortified that this moderate loudmouth boor would be hijacking a movement that you cared about,” Mr. Belling said, later, in an interview.

Nonetheless, on Monday, Mr. Trump made a round of calls to the state’s local radio hosts. The series of interviews, contentious and combative, did not go particularly well.

Ms. McKenna challenged his promise to build at wall at the nation’s southern border — “What does it look like? Where does it go?” she pressed him — and urged him to declare “wives and kids off-limits,” after Mr. Trump’s public spatinvolving pictures of his wife, Melania, and of Heidi Cruz, Ted Cruz’s wife.

Yet despite Ms. McKenna’s pleas that Mr. Trump “unify” the party, the interview ended on a rough note, with Mr. Trump hanging up on her.

Mr. Bader, the host in Green Bay, began his interview with Mr. Trump bluntly as well. “I have some concerns about both your behavior and what I consider to be vague policy positions,” he said.

In an interview, Mr. Bader described his conversation with Mr. Trump as “feeling like a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit.” “Like this isn’t real,” he said. “And to me that’s what his entire campaign feels like.”

That Mr. Trump, who has singled out reporters he does not like and banned certain media outlets he deems critical from attending his events, has pandered to the talk radio crowd here not only highlights the group’s clout, but also may reveal a general election calculation.

“The last thing you want to do as a Republican is irritate your base as you go into a general election in a swing state like Wisconsin,” said Mark Graul, a Republican strategist who ran George W. Bush’s campaign in Wisconsin in 2004 and has run other statewide races since. “And in many ways, talk radio is the voice of base Republicans in Wisconsin.”

The Wisconsin electorate, which gave rise to Speaker Paul D. Ryan — a hometown congressman whose attraction is predicated on civil discourse and serious policy proposals — is particularly well primed for the talk radio pitch here, which appeals to both their sense of conservative principles, as well as their Wisconsin-nice demeanor.

“For whatever reason, there is a pragmatism to Wisconsin hosts that you don’t see en masse in a lot of other hosts,” Mr. Bader said. “I believe I have a moral responsibility to do whatever small part I can in stopping Donald Trump. It’s beyond politics for me. I think he’s dangerous.”

And from Mr. Sykes: “I think talk radio has been more substantive, more intellectually serious here and therefore less prone to embrace an entertainer.”

“I feel very strongly that Donald Trump poses a fundamental challenge to the conservative movement, an existential challenge, so yes, I have made it my mission to stop him,” Mr. Sykes added.

Sykes’ next to last quote is a bit ironic given that the godfather of conservative talk, Rush Limbaugh, makes no bones about being an entertainer. People tend to forget that radio is a business, and if your ratings aren’t good enough, you are a poor advertiser draw, and then out the door you will go. But given how long these six have been on the air, clearly their shows work. (As opposed to liberal talk radio, which keeps getting tried and keeps failing, with few exceptions like Sly and 92.1 in Madison.)

I don’t listen to any of the six regularly anymore since their signals don’t get as far southwest as I am, and I don’t listen to them online because I work when they’re on the air. My past impression is that at least some of them, including Sykes, are avid boosters of Gov. Scott Walker specifically (in Sykes’ case going back to Walker’s Assembly days), and when I was a more regular listener I didn’t hear a lot of criticism of Walker. That could be part of their motivation for their Trump distaste, although all six were here during the heyday (if you want to call it that) of Act 10 and Recallorama, and Trump wasn’t.

Sykes, on the other hand, is the inspiration of what has been called the “Sykes effect,” over positions favored by Sykes that might be at odds with GOP leadership. (The “Sykes effect” isn’t found where I live, where neither Sykes nor any other Wisconsin-based conservative talk radio exists.)

The thing about what Sykes, Wagner, Belling, McKenna, Weber and Bader do, however, is that listeners are free to listen, or not.