Are Republicans Completely Toast in Arizona?BY STEPHEN KRUISER
JULY 19, 2023
When I left Arizona for my third — and longest — stint in California in 1996, the Republican party here was a well-oiled machine. Upon arrival in Los Angeles, I discovered that the California GOP was the messiest of hot messes, and that remained the case for the more than two decades that I lived there.
I’ve been back in my native Arizona for a little over five years now and, sadly, it looks like whatever was plaguing the California Republican party was contagious. The Arizona GOP that I returned to was so far removed from the one I left that I kept wondering if the good old days really were that good. They were, of course, but I quickly had to adjust to the fact that they were long gone.
Shortly after I moved back, Arizona elected Kyrsten Sinema to the United States Senate. She was the first Democrat to win a Senate election here since Dennis DeConcini — a guy my dad went to high school with — won reelection in 1988. By January 2021, both of our senators were Democrats, a situation that many would have thought impossible just a decade earlier. There were a lot of contributing factors that brought about this change, but I’m comfortable placing the majority of the blame on the state party.
Shifting demographics are the convenient scapegoat for a lot of people, and that is part of the problem. Arizona is one of those states that attract Democrats who flee the blue state hells that they’ve created, only to try and reestablish them here. The Dem flying monkeys in the mainstream media have been writing and saying for a couple of years that Arizona has “flipped” blue. That’s nonsense. It’s definitely gotten more purple, but we’re a long way from being blue.
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In early 2018, I began asking my conservative friends who were very knowledgeable about Arizona politics what kind of bench the GOP had here. All replied, “None.” It was only a slight exaggeration. Our current Senate situation is a reflection of that problem.
There is a lot to like about Martha McSally. Her skill as a retail politician isn’t one of them. McSally’s weaknesses as a statewide candidate were painfully apparent in her 2018 loss to Sinema. Because they had no one else to turn to, McSally was installed as a placeholder for the other Senate seat, which became open after the passing of John McCain.
Woefully short of options, the Arizona Republican party turned to McSally for the 2020 special election, where she was dispatched by carpetbagger Mark “I’M AN ASTRONAUT!” Kelly.
Fast-forward to 2022, and the disaster that Republicans endured in the gubernatorial and Senate races. I’ve written a lot about the ballot machine problems in Maricopa County, which will always be suspicious. Pinning the GOP failures in the two biggest races on that is off the mark though.
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Source:
https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/07/19/are-republicans-completely-toast-in-arizona-n1711924
