As Republicans fervently continue their efforts to turn Arizona into the Worst State—a challenge to be sure, but one they seem up to—the party's latest walking humiliation continues her own lurches toward the state's governor's office. Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, a Big Lie-supporting conspiracist who has based her entire campaign around calling other people's campaigns crooked, was yet again asked by the Important National News Media whether she intends to accept the results of her own election if she loses to Democratic candidate Katie Hobbs.
Once again, the answer is no. No, Lake can't conceive of such a thing. Accepting election losses is not something hoax-promoting fascists do, and Donald Trump has given Republicanism the green light it long needed to abandon policy, procedure, and long tradition of the peaceful transfer of power to turn the lying-about-everything-part into election strategy, governing strategy, pandemic strategy, and got-caught-with-national-security-documents-stuffed-in-your-sock-drawer defense strategy.
Arizona Republicanism's candidate for governor sees only two possible outcomes. Either she wins the election and graciously accepts the election's legitimacy, or mmmbufafloplmff:
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It's almost impressive how the most powerful country on the planet has decided that the best people to run things are the delusional children among us. Yes, this former Fox anchor who spends her time in the land of gin and pixies will no doubt do masterfully if put in charge of an entire American state. A third of the 2023 state budget will go toward putting underpants on every cactus in Phoenix, at the rate things are going.
The "real issue" is that "the people don't trust our elections," insisted hoax-promoting liar Kari Lake. It is fairer to say that the people who listen to Kari Lake's spittle-flecked election conspiracies don't trust elections; the rest of us here on Planet Reality haven't seen a damn thing to suggest anything the Republican Party hoax drivers have claimed is true in any respect.
We've got a two-party system, after all. There are the Americans who will follow any petty crook who shouts a conspiracy theory that might justify a full and total crackdown on whatever set of Americans they happen to most not like, and then there's everyone else. Unfortunately, the first group is both louder and completely lacking any sense of shame; Kari Lake cannot be embarrassed into oblivion. By anything, apparently.
The Republican Party's candidates have, by and large, settled on Trump's attempted seditious conspiracy as a core element of their own campaigns. You can count on any Republican candidate who aligns with Trump to assert that elections are legitimate if they win and "rigged" if they lose; during primary season, that led to elections in which multiple Republican candidates insisted that other Republican candidates were in on the conspiracy to "rig" elections. The current crop of candidates consists of dozens of toddlers propped up as supposed statesmen.
For example, football person Herschel Walker, a man who's lied so often about so many things in his campaign that even his own child has given up on him, a man who teeters on the line between delusion and reality with such gusto that it's not clear he even understands what job he's running for. He's currently locked in a public dispute as to whether an honorary police badge confers legitimate policing powers, which is—again—the sort of argument you would have with a small child. Or, apparently, a Republican senatorial candidate.
Lake is one of those. You're never quite sure whether she is still aware she's lying or, like a child with an imaginary friend, has chosen to live in a reality other than our own. What's not clear is why The Entire Damn Republican Party of the United States and Its Voters believe "definitely lying, possibly delusional" is the basis on which an entire new movement should be constructed.
Do these people live this way, in their own lives? When the electric bill comes, do they phone up their utility company to insist that the meter was rigged? Rigged, I tells you!?
When they eat at a restaurant, do Republican voters say, with ketchup on their lips and a dirty plate in front of them, that their food never came, and so, therefore, they do not have to pay?
Is it only elections that Kari Lake supporters have doubts about, or does it extend more broadly? Are red lights a conspiracy against them? The hours of operation at the local supermarket—are those really the hours, or is the company letting Democratic shoppers shop secretly when nobody is looking? The high school football injury that sometimes still makes it hurt to walk up the stairs—did it really happen, or is that just what Bill Gates and the vaccine companies want me to believe?
Are these people gullible only situationally, when convenient, or are they gullible as a core principle? Is it because they saw the loud orange man on television a decade back, and they were just so damn impressed with that imaginary lifestyle that they decided that, and no other television show, was the one America should be based on?
Does that mean that the America ten years from now will be based on Game of Thrones?
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Since Dobbs, women have registered to vote in unprecedented numbers across the country, and the first person to dig into these stunning trends was TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier, who's our guest on this episode of The Downballot. Bonier explains how his firm gathers data on the electorate; why this surge is likely a leading indicator showing stepped-up enthusiasm among many groups of voters, including women, young people, and people of color; how we know these new registrants disproportionately lean toward Democrats; and what it all might mean for November.