I’ve been writing for a while about the GOP in disarray over Trump’s Big Lie, but for some reason the press hasn’t been paying attention to me. Can you believe it?
But now that the 2022 campaign season is upon un in earnest, they have belatedly discovered this for themselves:
Former President Donald J. Trump returned on Saturday to Arizona, a cradle of his political movement, to headline a rally in the desert that was a striking testament to how he has elevated fringe beliefs and the politicians who spread them — even as other Republicans openly worry that voters will ultimately punish their party for it.
Mr. Trump’s favored candidate for governor, Kari Lake, is a first-time office seeker who has threatened to jail the state’s top elections official. His chosen candidate to replace that elections official, a Democrat, is a state legislator named Mark Finchem, who was with a group of demonstrators outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 as rioters tried to stop the certification of the 2020 election.
And one of his most unflinching defenders in Congress is Representative Paul Gosar, who was censured by his colleagues for posting an animated video online that depicted him killing a Democratic congresswoman and assaulting President Biden.
All three spoke at Mr. Trump’s rally in front of thousands of supporters on Saturday in the town of Florence, outside Phoenix. It was the first stadium-style political event he has held so far in this midterm election year in which he will try to deepen his imprint on Republicans running for office at all levels.
Here are a couple of others:
When Mr. Trump took the stage in the evening, he lavished praise on the slate of election-denier candidates in attendance. And he suggested that perpetuating his grievances about being cheated would be a decisive issue for Republican candidates.
“We can’t let them get away with it,” Mr. Trump said. Then, he added, referring to Ms. Lake and her rejection of the 2020 results: “I think it’s one of the reasons she’s doing so well.”
But as popular as the former president remains with the core of the G.O.P.’s base, his involvement in races from Arizona to Pennsylvania — and his inability to let go of his loss to Mr. Biden — has veteran Republicans in Washington and beyond concerned. They worry that Mr. Trump is imperiling their chances in what should be a highly advantageous political climate, with Democrats deeply divided over their policy agenda and Americans taking a generally pessimistic view of Mr. Biden’s leadership a year into his presidency.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, and other senior party officials have expressed their misgivings in recent days about Mr. Trump’s fixation on the last election, saying that it threatens to alienate the voters they need to win over in the next election in November.
Those worries are particularly acute in Arizona, where the far-right, Trump-endorsed candidates could prove too extreme in a state that moved Democratic in the last election as voters came out in large numbers to oppose Mr. Trump. The myth of widespread voter fraud is animating Arizona campaigns in several races, alarming Republicans who argue that indulging the former president’s misrepresentations and falsehoods about 2020 is jeopardizing the party’s long-term competitiveness.
“I’ve never seen so many Republicans running in a primary for governor, attorney general, Senate,” said Chuck Coughlin, a Republican consultant who has worked on statewide races in Arizona for two decades. “Usually you get two, maybe three. But not five.”
At the rally on Saturday, every speaker who took the stage before Mr. Trump repeated a version of the false assertion that the vote in Arizona in 2020 was fraudulent. Mr. Gosar, the congressman, did so in perhaps the darkest language, invoking the image of a building storm, a metaphor commonly used by followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. And he called for people involved in counting ballots in Arizona in 2020 to be imprisoned.
“Lock them up,” Mr. Gosar told the crowd. “That election was rotten to the core.”
For Republicans who are concerned about Mr. Trump’s influence on candidates they believe are unelectable, the basic math of such crowded primaries is difficult to stomach. A winner could prevail with just a third of the total vote — which makes it more than likely a far-right candidate who is unpalatable to the broader electorate can win the nomination largely on Mr. Trump’s endorsement.
Conservative activists in Arizona have long supplied Mr. Trump with the energy and ideas that formed the foundation of his political movement.
In 2011, when the real estate developer and reality television star was testing the waters for a possible presidential campaign, his interest in the conspiracy theories that claimed former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery led him to Arizona Tea Party activists and a state legislator. They were pushing for a state law to require that political candidates produce their birth certificates before qualifying for the ballot. Mr. Trump invited them to Trump Tower.
One of those activists, Kelly Townsend, now a state senator, spoke to the crowd on Saturday and praised those who sought to delegitimize Mr. Biden’s win.
[…]
As speaker after speaker attacked the credibility of the vote on Saturday — those with Mr. Trump’s official imprimatur were announced as “Trump endorsed” — several also called on the State Legislature to retroactively vote to overturn Mr. Biden’s win. Mr. Trump’s allies said they expect the issue to take on more urgency in the coming weeks, even though it would have no legal or practical impact.
Here’s one of the hand-wringing Republicans fretting about the problem:
Senate Minority Whip John Thune said this week that Republicans “welcome” former President Donald Trump’s help in taking back the Senate majority, but repeating his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen “takes our eyes off the ultimate prize.”
“President Trump still has a tremendous following among our supporters across the country and, you know, exercises that influence, or at least attempts to, on a daily basis,” Thune, R-S.D., told Fox News. “But I think ultimately for us as Republican senators our job right now is to try to get the majority back in 2022 and provide that check and balance against this crazy Biden administration agenda.” […]
The minority whip said winning the Senate will be the top marker of a successful 2022 for Republicans. But he said continued arguments over the presidential election are counterproductive to that goal.
“To the degree that President Trump can be helpful, can contribute to,” taking back the Senate, Thune said, “we welcome that.”
“But I think any time we’re talking about the 2020 election and rehashing that, it takes our eyes off the ultimate prize. And so I think most Republican senators understand that in order for us to be successful as a country that we have to get the majority back in the Senate and that means focusing on the future not the past,” he said. “We welcome the former president’s support of that, but would hope that he would play a constructive role and contribute to helping us win the majority back in 2022.”
You’ll notice that he doesn’t rebut Trump’s Big Lie. Of course, he doesn’t. And if push comes to shove he’ll support the loons Trump is pushing and Trump himself.
And why not? They don’t legislate. Their only agenda is to obstruct Democrats and let the courts deliver for their rich buddies and wingnut freaks. What does it really matter if Trump and his fascist cult take over?