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This is the world’s greatest Kari Lake takedown

Published on 15 Comments on This is the world’s greatest Kari Lake takedown

This is epic. Too bad we couldn't get it before the election.

15 thoughts on “This is the world’s greatest Kari Lake takedown”

  1. Jasper_in_Boston

    Epic, agreed. But given the scary details of the litany of outrages associated with Lake—and helpfully detailed by this reporter—it's a bit unsettling that 49.6% of Arizonans voted for her. Yiikes.

    1. cld

      Yes, those people lost, but they almost didn't --that's the message they're going to end up running with.

      This isn't the end of anything, this is the beginning of the war to prevent social conservatives from killing everyone that's going to occupy most of the next fifty years.

      1. Yikes

        What makes it scary is two part: (1) the numbers, and (2) who in the world votes R to make up those numbers?

        I don't expect the numbers to move much. This is about, as is alluded to in many posts groups of people on the R side who are losing something.

        "Losing" faith based laws, with more and more secular rights.
        "Losing," as the country moves to a more urban reality, the never-really-quite-true libertarian cowboy no regulations lifestyle rural voters seem to think they want, but which is simply not realistic in an urban environment of any size.

        "Losing," for those of a certain ilk, the comfort of caucasian dominance in a growing multi-racial country (see, California).

        How to manage millions of people who do not want to lose? It didn't, and hasn't worked out that great for the former conferderace. Does anyone really think that 2 or 4 years from now any of the hard core R base is just going to fade away?

  3. censustaker1

    All of what he said is great -- but as Jasper_in_Boston noted -- almost HALF of Arizonan voters chose her!! It's still SCARY!

  4. KJK

    Does anyone besides progressives care about what any MSNBC correspondent has to say. The fact that this shit head got 49.6% of the vote is scary.

  6. DFPaul

    Well, if you've spent any time in Arizona you could say, purely from the practical perspective of trying to get elected as a celebrity with no political experience, it was worth a try.

  7. pack43cress

    Yes, absolutely, folks, the closeness of this is scary. But Vaughn Hillyard's analysis is spot-on.
    What might help a bit against bed-wetting for us libs, here are a couple of thoughts, with the caveat that we don't want to lose our perception of the reality we face:
    > Arizona is one state out of 50. There were plenty of similar radical R candidates across the country, and many lost more decisively than Lake. So the picture of the state of things nationally is a little more nuanced than the closeness of AZ.
    > Things on a nation-wide level happen slowly. The Lake results takedown is part of a larger story: During the 4 years of TFG, the R party was publicly in lockstep supporting the crazy. Fissures within the R party were there but kept private. The Jan 6 committee hearings changed that just a bit, but enough to get a little snowball rolling. It remains to be seen if it will last, but this election seems to have extended those fissures a little. We need to keep the pressure on by continuously calling the zealots out for what they are.
    > The R base is now painted in the media as the autocratic wing, the trumpistas, the religious right, etc. etc. That is, in fact the *base* of the R party, but the base is not the sum total of people who vote R in any election. To oversimplify, in this election, some percentage of the R votes everywhere, including AZ, were not base voters, but rather people more similar to the stereotype "Rockefeller Republicans"; people whose identity is tied up tightly with the R brand of 50 years ago. But I think they are peeling away slowly. We need to keep up the work.
    > Our base is largely women, African-Americans, and young people. They got the message and turned out in *historical* numbers for a mid-term election. The new individuals in this coalition got a taste of political power. Our base is not shrinking, it is growing. But we need to nurture it.
    > Petience, Grasshopper; and keep up the practice.

    1. tdbach

      I'm not sure there are any so-called Rockefeller Republicans anymore. There was a time, not all that long ago, I might have characterized myself as one of those. But as the GOP got more and more radicalized, from Reagan on, the GOP brand became too toxic to bear, and I (and I think a lot of other RRs) began to see the light. This economic and political war against people of color - especially urban ones - and other forms of diversity wasn't an aberration or extreme fringe of the GOP; it was foundational. Their tolerance of moderates was con, a mask to hide their venality behind.

      That isn't to say that everyone who voted for the Kari Lakes of the election were MAGA purists. But they're not GOP brand loyalists either. They've just been washed over with Fox News and RW talk radio propaganda about the evils of Democrats for so long, they think even a reprehensible creep like Trump or Lake are preferable to a Democrat.

  8. Goosedat

    Over 49% of Arizona's voters selected Lake. The lies and demagoguery over issues like immigration that Trump used to win election in 2016 are still viable for a too significant proportion of voters. Even the Jan 6 insurrection does not dissuade these voters from supporting the 2020 election deniers. Unfortunately, DeSantis and Abbott have discovered new and more harmful means to energize and keep these voters in the camp of Republican authority. Lake chose the wrong model to win election but two Democratic House seats flipped and Schweikert barely won reelection. Rep Biggs also is vying for House leadership. Though these Republicans may no longer rely on Trump, they have enough electoral support to influence governance.

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