Kari Lake’s campaign for the Senate is going swell:
PHOENIX — When she ran for governor of Arizona last year, Kari Lake unapologetically pilloried her Republican opponents with attacks that targeted not just their conservative credentials, but their personal morals and even their families.
But now on a mission to flip a Senate seat from Arizona back to red after three cycles of GOP losses, Lake is courting some of those very same Republicans she recently denounced as “RINOs,” or Republicans in name only, hoping they will set aside hurt feelings and deep-seated resentments from her last scorched-earth campaign and unite around her candidacy.
[Announcer: They won’t.]
Lake has contacted her former primary rival, top GOP donors and past supporters, party officials and activists, and even a former senator as she tries to persuade them to coalesce around her. But Lake’s appeals for support have so far contained no actual apologies — and some Republicans say they are not likely to forgive her any time soon, complicating her path to victory in a state home to many moderate Republicans and independents whose support is key to winning. And as she continues to pursue a so-far unsuccessful legal battle to overturn her 2022 loss to Gov. Katie Hobbs (D), national Republicans fear she may continue pursing the same type of conspiracies and election denialism that harmed her previous campaign. They have urged her to stay focused on local issues like border security and inflation.
[Announcer: She won’t.]
Lake, who’s been endorsed by Trump, is telling Republicans privately that her rejection of “McCain Republicans” — when she called McCain a loser and told his fans to “get the hell out” of an event on the campaign trail — took place in the context of a bruising primary campaign and was not serious.
“It was not said a week before the election, it was said a full year ahead of the election while I was taking what was the equivalent of a nuclear financial bomb of attack ads and I was an ‘America First’ Republican running against a ‘McCain Republican,’” Lake told The Post. “And it was said in jest.”
That notorious Republican sense of humor, amirite?
But even after that comment, she continued her attacks, telling a conservative crowd days after winning the Aug. 2, 2022, primary election that she “drove a stake through the heart of the McCain machine.”
Boffo material for the open mic nite at Lots’aLaffs.
The bottom line is that the MAGA brain worm is deep inside Lake and she is not changing. Republican primary voters in Arizona will demand she be as nutty as they are, and if she is, then general-election voters will not pull the lever for the nutty lady.
She’s like that episode of Star Trek with Evil Spock. It’s impossible for MAGAs to act sane, she isn’t going to fool anyone, at least not for very long.
Republished with permission from Mock Paper Scissors
