Trump Can Still Be The Republican Party's Future. Just Look To Arizona.

[DonViejo]

Arizona Republicans keep losing — but the state party has already turned itself into a Trump machine, still trying to win an election that’s long over. And that might be the future of conservatism.

Rosie Gray
BuzzFeed News Reporter

Reporting From Phoenix, Arizona

Posted on February 18, 2021, at 1:41 p.m. ET

PHOENIX — Three days after Joe Biden’s inauguration, Kelli Ward, the combative, hard-right chair of the Arizona Republican Party, was urging her state party to reelect her. A former state senator and doctor who was nicknamed “Chemtrail Kelli” for holding a forum to address constituents’ concerns about the streaks of condensation that flow behind airplanes, Ward ran for US Senate as a right-wing challenger to Republican incumbents and lost twice. Far from being exiled from political relevance as a result, Ward was elected to lead the Arizona GOP in 2019 and has used her position to promote a loyalist agenda shaped around the now-former president.

“Are we going to reelect me and show the state, the country, and the world that we are in America-first Arizona? Or will we go back to the dark days before Trump?” Ward asked the audience at the state party’s biannual statutory meeting on Jan. 23. Republican officials from all over Arizona had gathered at the Dream City megachurch to elect new officers and debate proposed resolutions. Ward had drawn three challengers for her position, but she had a clear advantage: the endorsement of Donald Trump, who had recorded an audio message in support of her that Ward released the night before the meeting. She capped off her speech by playing the recording over the audio system, the disembodied voice of the former president booming in the church’s hall.

It’s unclear what a Republican official in Arizona should find so dark about the days before Trump. In those days, Republicans consistently won statewide elections. Now, Democrats occupy both Senate seats, the state went blue in the 2020 presidential election for the first time since 1996, and thousands of Arizonans have changed their party registration away from the GOP in the wake of an attack on the Capitol fueled by Trump. But this string of failure hasn’t yet prompted a course correction in Republican politics here, instead strengthening Trumpist resolve. Arizona has for decades been the cutting edge of right-wing US politics, an early warning system for where national Republican politics were headed. So the battle here for the post-Trump future, defined by Trump even in his absence, could be the national party’s future too.

What might have been a standard party business meeting proved unusually fractious, at one point being interrupted by far-right former Senate primary candidate Daniel McCarthy, who got onstage and insisted that Ward’s party was colluding with Democrats as part of a “uniparty” conspiracy. Ward tolerated the outburst at first before kicking McCarthy and a handful of supporters out. The party had tried to keep tight control over who was allowed in and who wasn’t, even banning reporters from entering, so all they got to see of this incident in person was McCarthy’s exit onto the church’s patio. Exclusive broadcasting privileges went to Right Side Broadcasting. Ward won reelection at the meeting, but the vote went to a second ballot, and she ended up winning by a mere 42 votes. Some state committee members have raised questions about the validity of the vote — an ironic twist considering her laser focus on amplifying false claims of fraud in the presidential election.

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https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/kelli-ward-arizona-republican-future-donald-trump

[LizBeth]

1. Who knows where Trumps mental health will be. That will put him at 78. I am not going to worry

about it now.

[Thekaspervote]

2. Advice we should all take..don't worry but stay "woke."

[LizBeth]

3. +1. It is not like he was not at mental collapse the last four years. Can you imagine what he will

be in four more years? But stay woke, yes. You said it well.