Matt Latimer is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He is currently a co-partner in Javelin, a literary agency and communications firm based in Alexandria, and contributing editor at Politico Magazine.

In the town of Ripon, Wisconsin, sits a small, white clapboard schoolhouse with the sign: “Birthplace of the Republican Party.” According to Wisconsin lore, the GOP was conceived there in 1853, when a small group of citizens, inspired by their opposition to the spread of slavery, came together to change “the future of our nation,” as the “Little White Schoolhouse” website puts it.

The question we face now is: Has Wisconsin done it again? That is, changed the future of the nation—or at least of the GOP? Republican elites are giddy over the trouncing of Donald Trump by Ted Cruz in Tuesday's primary, and the GOP establishment did pull off a victory when it came to slowing the Trump steamroller. For a few more weeks at least, the world has been made safe for the GOP as we’ve come to know it—aging white men who hold many of their voters in bewilderment or outright contempt and then, more often than not, go on to politely lose to the Democrats in the fall. Usually by a small enough margin that keeps the majority of GOP officeholders in power. (Which is all that really matters, right?)


But the GOP leadership is probably in deep denial. It's far more likely that the Republican Party as we know it died Tuesday night in the same state as it was purportedly born in. What’s forgotten amid the celebration is that 83 percent of Wisconsin Republicans still voted for the two candidates who are most determined to redefine the Party of Lincoln (and Ripon) and break the “establishment” hold on it. In some ways, the Stop Trump movement’s shotgun marriage to Ted Cruz—the most awkward coupling since Michael Jackson “dated” Brooke Shields—is actually a worse bet for what Cruz likes to call “the Washington cartel.” As the conservative Texan has said repeatedly on the campaign trail, he is far less likely to make mutually beneficial arrangements with the establishment class than the author of The Art of the Deal.

Cruz, a shrewd strategist, is also well aware that a number of the people who support him now really hope to force a contested convention and insert somebody more pleasing to their interests. In classic fashion, for example, Lindsey Graham used his awkward endorsement of Cruz, a man whose murder he had joked about only weeks earlier, to endorse John Kasich. The GOP’s all but powerless powers-that-be have said that Cruz is the least bad of two terrible options, with Wisconsin’s own Paul Ryan, the 2012 vice presidential candidate and current speaker of the House, emerging as the favorite dark horse (or white knight: pick your political cliché) to save the party. If the Ryan scenario—however unlikely—does in fact play out, it’s entirely probable that Wisconsin and its favorite son could someday be viewed as saviors of the GOP, or at least of the GOP establishment.

Of course, neither of the two men who have actually, you know, bothered to seek the votes of their party faithful, is waiting for some shadowy GOP cabal to quietly show them the exit. In a blistering statement issued last night that preposterously labeled Cruz an establishment “puppet,” the Trump campaign hit on that point, which will likely be its main campaign theme here on out: The evil establishment is coming for you. As messages go, it’s not its worst idea—especially from the campaign that decided issuing unflattering pictures of a rival candidate’s wife was sound strategy or that launching a weeks-long, scorched-earth PR offensive against a bruised reporter was smarter than simply apologizing. Of 38 primaries and caucuses to date, the so-called establishment candidate has won just four (Marco Rubio in Minnesota, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and Kasich in Ohio). Even in Wisconsin, a majority of voters in exit polls said that their party’s nominee should be the candidate with the most delegates, not a spectator to be named later.

Cruz himself is unlikely to tolerate the label of establishment “puppet” for long. He’ll undoubtedly find a way out of his brief marriage of convenience with the GOP hierarchy—and basically do an end run around them, a tactic at which he is has proved to be highly skilled, after all. Thus, what the Republican elites are likely to have done in Wisconsin is make an eventual arrangement of sorts between the Trump and Cruz factions of the GOP all but inevitable—if only to stop the establishment from screwing them both. And the “Stop Trump” strategists will have to decide whether such blatant defiance of the express wishes of their own voters at Cleveland with Candidate X is worth potentially destroying the GOP once and for all.

In other words, the elites are still more dead than Jon Snow.

So what’s likely to happen now? Here’s my take:

1. The Trump Comeback

For the next few days at least, media pundits will discuss the dismantling of the Trump bandwagon with thinly disguised glee. That is, until they realize how much he helps the ratings. Without Trump dominating the news, what else are they going to talk about—issues? Probably by next week, the media narrative will feature the beginnings of Trump’s comeback. The big policy speeches. The (likely) hiring of seasoned campaign veterans. Some new, surprising endorsement that sucks up attention. And then an expected “yuge” victory in New York.

2. The Cruz Cavalcade Grows

Meanwhile, the professional, even ruthless, Cruz campaign will continue to siphon off delegates wherever they can find them. The senator will score at least a few more victories—and maybe even have a battle to the finish in California. All of which means Cruz will have hundreds of devoted supporters descending on Cleveland with no love for the entrenched veterans of official Washington.

3. A Trump-Cruz Partnership

Both candidates will arrive at the convention with a vested interest in permitting only one of two names to be placed in nomination—and they’ll collectively have the vast majority of delegates to enforce their will. Whether the two manage a more permanent partnership, as in a ticket together, seems almost unimaginable. But so was the idea that JFK would pick a man he despised, Lyndon B. Johnson, for vice president in 1960, among a half-dozen other odd-couple pairings in U.S. political history.

4. The Romney Do-Over Do-Over?

There is one more sensible size 11 shoe that might drop. And that’s Mitt Romney deciding the third time’s the charm—making his interest in a “draft” at the convention a bit more obvious than it is already.

My prediction? Trump and Cruz, who have both come to prominence detesting and being detested by the GOP establishment, will find a way to upend that establishment once again. But whatever happens next, Wisconsin, you deserve the thanks. Or blame. We’re not sure yet.