There are election-result deniers on the Right, such as former President Donald Trump. There are election-result deniers on the Left, such as Stacey Abrams. But Kari Lake, GOP Senate candidate for Arizona, is also a two-time election denier (Trump’s 2020 loss and her 2022 Arizona gubernatorial race loss).
However, this does not appear to bother those Republicans vying to lead Senate Republicans. Nor does Lake’s prior description of their former longtime colleague John McCain as a “loser,” nor her demand that McCain’s supporters “get the hell out” of Arizona. All three of the candidates to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as the next Senate Republican leader — Sens. John Thune (R-SD), John Barrasso (R-WY), and John Cornyn (R-TX) — are set to attend a fundraiser for Lake on Wednesday. Not exactly complementing her campaign message that Washington is a swamp fortress of political rot, Lake’s fundraiser will be held in the capital.
There is an obvious Washington swamp character to this event. Ideologically, these three candidates would appear to have little in common with Lake. But at a personal level, their prostration before her candidacy seems odd. While Lake is now urgently backtracking to shore up the GOP voter base, her defining political narrative has centered on aligning with Trump and replicating his attacks on the McCain family and McCain’s legacy. The McCain family has not accepted Lake’s obviously self-interested effort to heal those wounds.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Considering that McCain was a war hero who comes from a family of highly decorated naval officers (two of McCain’s sons serve), you’d think Lake’s attacks on their former colleague might have burned slightly stronger into the minds of these three Republicans. After all, Cornyn served with McCain in the Senate for 16 years, Thune served with him for 13 years, and Barrasso served with him for 11 years. It’s also notable that while these three Republicans are part of a larger group of 14 other Republican senators attending Wednesday’s fundraiser, numerous other big-name Republicans are not.
All of this begs the question: Would these three be fundraising for Lake if they were not running to lead Senate Republicans? And if the answer is no, doesn’t that suggest they and Lake are actually quite satisfied with the swamp?