This Should Be Fun
By 
Vice President Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney plan to be in Ripon, Wisconsin, today. (gift link) Ripon claims to be the birthplace of the Republican Party, and the event will launch Wisconsin Republicans for Harris-Walz. As Marcy Wheeler pointed out on Bluesky, Cheney can talk about January 6 in a way that Harris cannot.
Ripon is a small town in central Wisconsin with a college with which I am very well acquainted. I’ve driven from Milwaukee to Ripon probably a hundred times and taken various sorts of transportation from New Jersey to Ripon.
Ripon sits on two major highways in its part of Wisconsin. Major highways in that part of the world have only two lanes. Those highways can’t be closed down for the full visit.
The nearest airports are in Oshkosh and Appleton. Appleton can handle jets; I’m not sure Oshkosh can. They’re at least 20 miles from Ripon. Milwaukee and Madison are around 80 miles distant. So transportation of a sitting Vice President and all the associated people into Ripon will be interesting.
Presumably Harris and Cheney will visit the little white schoolhouse that is where the meetings were held on starting a new political party in response to the Whigs’ inability to deal with the question of whether slavery would prevail in the new states. IIRC, it’s on one of those main highways, and the area around it is rather crowded.
There are a couple of parks in Ripon that would be suitable for a larger gathering, but the college has the best areas for speeches to a crowd.
Ripon’s claim to being the birthplace of the Republican Party is somewhat disputed, although there were definitely early meetings there on the subject, and the folks working on that new political party also started the college. In February, which is a really bad time for a Founders’ Day in central Wisconsin. Heather Cox Richardson, whose specialty is the history of the Republican Party, attributes the origin of the party more to Jackson, Michigan, and New York City.
So I look forward to the reports, both from the media and from my friends there.
Update: CSpan will carry the event at 5:30 ET.
Further Update: Here’s the video –