#CoupCoupKari Lake Promises to Sow Chaos in Arizona to Please Her Real Boss

Kari Lake introduced Trumplethinskin at his recent Florence, Arizona rally as his endorsed candidate for Arizona Governor. She is really his Apprentice wanna-be dictator. Her speech was a litany of crazy that would have disqualified someone from being elected to any office a few years ago, let alone our state’s highest. Her promised policies would essentially destroy our federal system of governance in the name of ‘resisting’ the Biden Administration and pandering to her fascist base of Drumpf cultists.

Kari is a classic charismatic demagogue: she’s got a great charismatic presence, but no qualifications whatsoever beyond a knack for appealing to the unreason and prejudices of a populist rabble, has zero principles, and shows no concern for institutional or constitutional limits on governmental power. She is the horrifying future of the Republican Party on the course Herr Drumpfenfuhrer is plotting. She is the model monster of a modern major mountebank.

She led with a denunciation of a fictional version of Democratic ideas: defund the police, open borders, censorship (referring to private tech companies de-platforming lies, I presume), masking, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and killing babies (not sure if she’s just referring to abortion rights or she’s signaling QAnon adherents with this one…). Of course, those are not Democratic ideas or goals – they are the boogeymen ideas that the GOP uses to scare the crap out of their voters to drive them to the polls. Kari promised that she would be the momma bear that would “rip them to shreds” before she let the evil Democrats “get to our kids” who would never “cower to radical Marxists”. She vowed to resist “racist garbage” like CRT and wouldn’t allow any “anti-American brainwashing” of kids – by dictating what can be taught in our schools, a contradiction if ever there was one, and the excuse of every book-burning reactionary since Savonarola. Oddly, Kari did not raise her harebrained scheme to put body cameras on every teacher – maybe because even her GOP primary opponents pushed back on that trial balloon, but maybe that’s still a goal for her as there are bills to monitor teachers in the classroom running in the state legislature this session, I am told.

Next, she demonstrated her demagoguery, by promising to use state militarily and police to secure the border – and finish the wall -and vowed she would “not ask Biden’s permission to do it.” I probably need not point out that we no longer live under the Articles of Confederation, and matters of immigration, nationalization, border security, and foreign relations are explicitly and exclusively assigned to the Federal Government. But as GOP governors and state officials are widely flouting those constitutional facts to whip their base into a fine froth, it is worth noting, at least. Kari proclaimed she’s for “common sense, not communism”. By this, I gather she means she will not be limited by institutional or legal constraints on her office and will do whatever she wants in office, and will strawman and mischaracterize any opposition, even from Republicans. She declared that “we are being invaded”, which I believe is meant to signal and aligns with her party’s newest defense of taking immigration matters into their own hands under the utterly absurd pretext that our states are under armed attack, and thus justified in availing themselves of ‘self-defense’, much like their newest paragon Kyle Rittenhouse was engaged in ‘self-defense’? I point this out because she laid out exactly this theory claiming the 10th Amendment means that states don’t need permission to “defend our state” and that she would therefore arrogate the power to “arrest and deport” immigrants. Just another example of her utter recklessness and unwillingness to work within the structure of our federalist system.

She further vowed not to comply with any public health measures including any mandates for vaccination (not sure if she means specifically COVID vaccinations ONLY, or ANY and ALL vaccinations) or for non-pharmaceutical interventions like masking, restrictions or closure of public venues, and social distancing. Next, she called Dr. Anthony Fauci a “liar” and was met with the expected “Lock Him Up” chant.

She vowed to “send to prison” anyone involved with certifying the 2020 election which she deemed “fraudulent” and “rotten to the core” and that “everyone knows it”. She vowed she would “close the loopholes that let them cheat”, by which I presume she means ‘get more votes than us’. She finally crowed that she was “30% up in the polls” and would achieve victory over the “uni-party and swamp donors” – which I guess includes her Republican primary opponents. So now even her fellow Republicans are to be painted as socialists, I suppose, since she vows to “keep socialism out” of the state and her opponents are also members of the “uni-party”.

This is for the responsible and traditional conservatives out there, though I suspect that most already feel this way: Kari Lake is not just another far-right candidate of the Republican Party. She’s not just a Trumpy candidate. She’s a different sort of fish altogether: she’s a reckless, clueless, and disastrously unqualified rabble-rouser and demagogue of the first water. She IS Trump. (oh, the fingers, they burn!) As the Narcissist-in-Chief did to our federal government for 4 years, she would make Arizona’s government a war zone, a generator of chaos and uncertainty.

She will discredit our state and make life here an unpredictable, chaotic reflection of her id.  If you want this state to be responsibly governed, and not become a theater of the absurd, you cannot select Kari Lake.