Kari Lake can’t believe someone calls her a “far-right extremist”
Kari Lake continues her makeover tour, assuring us that she’s just like Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump. Well, she’s right about one thing.
What you should know about Ruben Gallego and Kari Lake in the race for the US Senate
U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego and former television host Kari Lake are vying for Arizona’s U.S. Senate seat. Learn more about the November race.
The Republic
With only 44 days left until ballots land in mailboxes in Arizona, Kari Lake is making another attempt to overhaul her election platform.
This time by comparing herself to Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.
OK, so the comparison with Trump is spot on.
“You called Arizona’s favorite son, Senator Barry Goldwater, extreme,” Lake wrote in a social media post on Sunday. “The media called Reagan extreme, they called Trump extreme, they called every one of you extreme, they called me extreme too. Can you imagine calling a middle-aged mother like me a right-wing extremist?”
A middle-aged mother who believes conspiracy theories and still whines that the 2020 election was rigged? One who has declared herself the “rightful governor” of Arizona and, despite losing two lawsuits and multiple appeals, is still in court demanding a rerun of the 2022 election?
Can you imagine that this is a little bit, oh, I don’t know, outside?
Kari Lake is no Goldwater or Reagan
Just two years ago, Lake called Arizona’s 1864 abortion law a “great law.” It provides for a prison sentence of two to five years for anyone who performs an abortion, even on a rape victim.
She called the late U.S. Senator John McCain a “loser” and boasted after her victory in the 2022 Republican primaries that she had “driven a stake through the heart of the McCain machine.”
Goldwater was a staunch conservative and lost the 1964 presidential election by a landslide because he refused to disassociate himself from the John Birch Society. But he was no conspiracy theorist and when necessary, he was willing to tell the Kaiser (President Richard Nixon) that he had no clothes on.
Can you imagine Kari Lake advising Donald Trump to resign in the face of evidence of his misconduct?
Reagan inherited the mantle of conservatism from Goldwater, but I can’t recall him ever trying to alienate an entire wing of his own party, or crying electoral fraud after a defeat. He viewed his opponents as loyal opposition, not enemies of the state.
Lake, meanwhile, has been marching in lockstep with Trump’s MAGA movement for several years, delivering a rhetorical punch to the gut of any Republican who dares to step out of line.
Polls show she is behind Gallego and Trump
But she’s the one with the permanent bruises. Polls show that many people just don’t like her.
In virtually all polls, she trails Democratic U.S. Representative Ruben Gallego, and among Republican voters, she trails Trump by double digits.
While Trump received the support of 93% of Republican voters in a CBS News/YouGov poll in May, Lake received only 73%.
That’s a red flag that’s flying wild, especially considering that of those all-important moderate voters, only 22 percent said they would vote for her, while 58 percent supported Gallego, a liberal working on his own transformation.
Even 12% of Conservatives said they would vote for Gallego instead of Lake.
And yet here she is, telling us that she is just like Barry Goldwater. Like Ronald Reagan.
All this while portraying state Senator Wendy Rogers, who regularly spouts anti-Semitic nonsense and is possibly the craziest person ever elected to the Arizona legislature, as a patriot.
Kari Lake is suddenly horrified: Through the “stolen heroism” of a candidate?
While she portrays Donald Trump as some kind of messiah.
Lake wants us to believe that she is not an extremist
In January, Lake unleashed a goldmine of conspiracy theories about COVID-19 being spread by a secret cabal of elites (read: “them”) in order to prevent the re-election of the only man who can stop their quest for world domination.
“They’re pushing this globalist agenda and they don’t care who they destroy in the process,” she told Real America’s Voice, a far-right news site aimed at the MAGA nation.
“They have to win and advance their globalist agenda. And the man who is most dangerous to that globalist agenda – and who, by the way, will mean the end of America, to the globalist agenda – the man who stands in their way of doing that is the man you just saw on your screen, President Donald J. Trump.
“And that’s why they released viruses, they tried to destroy economies, they tried to shut down the country – to stop him.”
Now, seven months later and 71 days before the election, here we are.
“Can you imagine,” asks Lake, “calling a middle-aged mother like me a right-wing extremist?”
Reach Roberts at [email protected]. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @LaurieRobertsaz and in threads under @LaurieRobertsaz.
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