Can Kari Lake moderate her Trumpian antics if she wins the election?
Maricopa County officials are saying it will likely be Monday or beyond before we see the final tally in the 2022 midterm election and at last know if Kari Lake or Katie Hobbs will be governor.
Conventional wisdom says that votes cast Election Day will be counted last and will likely favor Lake. But I’m prepared to be surprised.
As we wait, I’m contemplating some interesting questions about Kari Lake.
Can she learn? Can she change?
Because the facts on the ground changed in American politics last Tuesday, and the Trump banner that emblazoned her campaign looks more threadbare by the hour.
Trump faceplants in the election
Much of American media believes that Donald Trump was the big loser in Tuesday’s election. His MAGA candidates lost marquee races in Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan.
Meanwhile, Republicans who put the most distance between themselves and Trump were Tuesday’s peak performers.
One of those, Ron DeSantis, sent Trump into spasms because the Florida governor would not kiss the pontiff’s ring. He didn’t ask for Trump’s endorsement. He didn’t want his stump speech, his rally or even his robocall.
He ignored Trump, and the former president raged. Then Trump answered the silence with a thug move: He threatened to divulge dark secrets about DeSantis if the governor decides to run for the 2024 Republican nomination for president.
Red vs. blue:Arizona’s voting patterns in 2022 show familiar divide
That had all the charm of a Vito Corleone horse head – and pretty soon even Trump backers were recoiling.
Mark Tapscott, writing on the conservative website Instapundit, called it “the last straw in this corner. … The tragedy is that Trump cannot see himself as others, including many who have supported him with passion, now see him, and make the necessary adjustments.”
Rupert Murdoch’s triad of U.S. conservative media – Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post – celebrated a changing of the guard in the Republican Party, best summed up in the Post’s front-page photo of DeSantis above the headline “DeFuture.”
Trump is a drag on the GOP brand
If that wasn’t insult enough, Trump’s old press secretary Kayleigh McEnany suggested he delay his planned announcement of his 2024 presidential run until after the Georgia runoff, so he doesn’t provoke Georgia Democrats to turn out en masse to defeat Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker.
Two years ago in the Georgia runoff, Trump so suppressed Republican turnout he cost his party control of the U.S. Senate.
These are facts.
Donald Trump is shrinking. MAGA is a sell-stock. And Kari Lake is a full-immersion MAGA Republican.
Lake is an extraordinary speaker who has dazzled national media this election season. Some of her delivery is God-given, but most of it is learned and refined over years of reporting and anchoring television news. It may seem all façade, but it’s no small achievement. If it were, all politicians would look and sound like her.
Lake mimics Trump in savaging opponents
Behind the delivery, however, is a Trump-like aggressiveness that wants to bludgeon all opponents. That might get you traction with the base in an election, but it…
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