GOP Establishment Thinks Their Own Arizona Base In Too Crazy To Be Trusted In Primaries-- Begs Trump To Calm Them Down

Martha McSally is widely considered a sane, mainstream Republican, especially in comparison with her two rivals for the Republican Senate nomination to replace Jeff Flake. Of course, compared to those two-- Kelli Ward and Joe Arpaio-- even Sarah Palin and Nero would be considered sane people... by some. But don't be fooled; Martha McSally is a Trump enabling rubber-stamp. Just look at her record, 97.8, on the Trump affinity tracker. FiveThirtyEight projects a score of 57.6 for someone representing AZ-02. Her 40.2 is the difference between McSally's actual and predicted Trump-support scores. She's right up there in the top dozen out of all 365 members of Congress. That's not exactly mainstream. In fact, that defines serious congressional Trump enablement.

So she's running for the Senate now and the Republican Party establishment-- both in DC and in Phoenix-- is petrified she'll lose the primary to one of the two crazies, Ward or Arpaio, either of whom would probably lose the general to GOP-lite Kyrsten Sinema, Schumer's hand-picked candidate. Actually, the latest Emerson poll shows Sinema beating any of the three, but shows McSally doing less horribly than Ward or Arpaio.

Yesterday, Alex Isenstadt, writing for Politico, reported that NRSC chairman Cory Gardner (R-CO) called Señor Trumpanzee and asked him to endorse McSally, even though the two crackpots are his natural allies and cronies and have more-- much more-- in common with him politically. Gardner and his staff (and, presumably, Miss McConnell are afraid that Arizona's right-wing voters (i.e., Republicans) will nominate one of the two unelectable candidates and cede the seat to Sinema in November. Now only Super-Trump can save the day (at least in the primary. In the general, if McSally is the nominee, he'll have to avoid Arizona like the plague). According to Isenstadt's sources Señor T "was non-committal and did not say yes or no to the request."

In an interview in May, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made clear that McSally would run strongest against Sinema, though he said he was unsure if the party would need to intervene on her behalf in the primary.

“It’s pretty obvious which of our candidates have a best chance of winning,” he said.

If Arpaio or Ward wins the primary, it would also put GOP senators in the difficult position of choosing whether to endorse those candidates. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), for example, said Arizona is one of the few places she might campaign this fall for Republicans because she won’t campaign against colleagues.

“I will go campaign in states where there are open seats, like Arizona,” she said in an interview last week. Asked about Ward and Arpaio, she replied: “Let me rephrase that. I would campaign for Martha McSally."

While Republicans are eager for Trump to intervene, the president may be disinclined to do so. He has previously lavished praise on Ward, and he pardoned Arpaio of criminal contempt, who shares his hardline immigration views. Both candidates are closely aligning themselves with the president, though Arpaio is trailing badly and the White House is uncomfortable with Ward promoting a photo of her alongside the president as an implied endorsement, according to the Arizona Republic.

McSally is the frontrunner in the primary, yet she faces obstacles. A pro-Ward super PAC, Kelli PAC, has been airing ads calling McSally “one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress.”

Ward’s super PAC has been financed by Republican mega-donor Robert Mercer, himself a Trump ally who has given the group $800,000. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) beat Ward in the 2016 primary by 11 percentage points.

At the same time, Democrats are attempting to meddle in the Republican primary and sink McSally. Red and Gold, a newly-formed Democratic group, has begun airing commercials assailing McSally for putting “Washington over Arizona.”

When The Parties Undermine Their Own Candidates

Tony Cárdenas had no problem winning his heavily Democratic San Fernado Valley reelection bid, despite credible accusations that he he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl and threatened to fire her father if she squealed. Last month an L.A. Superior Court judge ruled that there is "a reasonable and meritorious basis" for the suit to go forward but Pelosi quashed it in Congress. He's definitely not getting the Al Franken treatment.

Cárdenas' district gave Trump a mere 16.8% of its vote in 2016 and the unassailable PVI is D+29. In the primary about 2 weeks ago, despite being a child molestor, Cárdenas scored 67% against Republican Benito Bernal (18%) and Democrat Joseph Shammas (8%). There wasn't a peep out of Pelosi or her DCCC. Funny, because when the decode to destroy a candidate, they certainly know how to do it. And not just Laura Moser.

In Orange County, the DCCC released all kinds of sex allegations against their own recruit, Hans Keirstead, who seems to have won the CA-48 race, leaving the DCCC in a really awkward position. And despite Archie Parnell handily winning his South Carolina primary, the DCCC is poisoning the atmosphere against him for allegations by his then-wife made in a 1973 divorce filing.

The DCCC communications director, Meredith Kelly, who also led the charge against other Democrats the DCCC has trying to destroy told the media that "What Archie Parnell did is inexcusable and deeply disturbing, and he should drop out of this race immediately." So what Parnell is accused of doing to his wife in 1973 is "inexcusable" but Cárdenas raping a 16 year old child is... crickets. The whole DCCC crowd has ganged up on Parnell and keeps demanding he drop out of the race, reaffirming that they will not spend any money in SC-05-- the Charlotte exurbs plus Lancaster, York and Cherokee counties-- where he came close to beating Ralph Norman in a special election when Mick Mulvaney resigned in 2017.

• Ralph Norman (R)- 45,076 (51%)
• Archie Parnell (D)- 42,341 (47.9%)

Norman outspent Parnell $1,630,143 to $1,379,838. But his case isn't the only one where the establishment is trying to destroy politically. In fact, the Republicans so the exact same thing... and as bad or worse than the Democrats. (Surprise, surprise, both parties really suck.)

Last week James Arkin blew the whistle on McConnell for this newest interference-- the Arizona Senate contest. The Democratic establishment has chosen the worst-- literally, the worst Democrat in the House, Kyrsten Sinema, as the nominee. McConnell wants to do the same thing for the GOP-- and he wants it to be the mainstream conservative, Rep. Martha McSally, rather than one of the neo-fascists, Kelli Ward or Joe Arpaio.

The McConnell-controlled Pac, One Nation, is already run ads claiming that McSally is far more right-wing and extreme than her record indicates. "The ads," wrote Arkin, "from the McConnell-aligned nonprofit One Nation, don’t explicitly reference the Senate race. But they quote McSally saying, 'We’ve got to build the wall,' just as the two-term Republican has been tacking to the right on immigration. She recently pulled her support from legislation that would have offered a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally, instead backing a more conservative immigration bill, and McSally’s office also recently took down a video from last year that featured her defending DACA, the Obama-era program that protected young undocumented immigrants from deportation." Keep in mind that McConnell is the most disliked politician in America.

The TV ad marks the first move by a national group in Arizona’s Senate race, emphasizing the high stakes there as Republicans defend their 51-49 Senate majority. Democrats are confident in Rep. Kyrsten Sinema’s chances to flip the seat held by GOP Sen. Jeff Flake, who is retiring. McConnell has made clear his preference for McSally in the primary, and national Republicans fear the race will be unwinnable if former state legislator Kelli Ward or former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio wins the nomination in late August.

Still, McConnell’s involvement comes with its own risks. The majority leader is a controversial figure among GOP primary voters, and that unpopularity was weaponized against McConnell’s chosen candidate in Alabama’s special election last year, when pro-McConnell groups spent heavily to back former Sen. Luther Strange before he lost his primary. In Arizona, Ward has already attacked the Republican establishment for interfering in the race.

"The establishment and Never Trump forces know they have to prop up Martha McSally because her support is stalling with primary voters,” Zach Henry, a spokesman for Ward, wrote in an email. “McSally's record of personal attacks on President Trump, opposing the border wall, and her dozens of votes for amnesty and reckless Washington spending doesn't appeal to Arizonans."

McSally has faced criticism from both sides for her immigration positions, with Democrats criticizing her conservative shift since announcing her Senate campaign. But the Republican primary is the first hurdle for McSally, who has been labeled “McAmnesty” by Ward’s campaign.

"Martha began working on Securing America's Future Act last September-- long before a Senate run was even a consideration," said Torunn Sinclair, a spokeswoman for McSally's campaign. "This is political posturing coming from Democrats who are grasping at straws trying to poke holes in Martha's effective record fighting for Arizonans."

Eric Beach, a strategist for Ward, told Politico in May that Ward’s campaign would not simply be a referendum on McConnell. But the majority leader has played a role in the primary: A day after that article appeared, Ward wrote in a fundraising appeal that she was “the No. 1 target” of McConnell and that he had “thrown his weight” behind McSally in the race.

In another fundraising appeal late last month, Ward labeled McConnell a “major supporter” of McSally and compared that to endorsements she had received from conservative figures Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Sebastian Gorka.

Steven Law, president of One Nation and its affiliated super PAC Senate Leadership Fund, said in an interview earlier this week he thought McSally is well-positioned to win the primary. He didn’t discuss his group’s plans to invest in the race, saying that was something “everyone is still evaluating.” But he praised McSally’s fundraising ability and said she’s “well-positioned to be able to win this in her own right.”

...Law wrote in a memo that in most GOP primaries, the relative strength of the candidate and their political operation are critical variables. In the interview this week, Law said he’s confident in McSally.

“The record-to-record comparison between her and her two competitors in the primary, I think, will be a deal closer for Republican primary voters,” he said.

What will The Senate Look Like In January 2019? The Map Predicts A Huge GOP Win-- But Voters Have Other Ideas

Schumer has chosen a handful of especially bad recruits as candidates for November. Keep in mind the DSCC did not recruit Beto O'Rourke and until very recently when they started seeing his eye-popping contributions and his even more eye-popping polling, they completely ignored him. Beto should hope Schumer keeps away; his race to replace Cruz is too close to call now. Cruz would like nothing more than to be able to equate Beto with Schumer.

Schumer's recruits-- Phil Bredensen in Tennessee, Jacky Rosen in Nevada and Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona are all very conservative. Bredensen is probably the only Democrat who could win in Tennessee (a state where he is universally known and liked-- and with an R+14 PVI). But Nevada didn't need a wretched conservative like Rosen. Hillary beat Trump there and the statewide PVI is D+1. And Arizona? The PVI is R+5. And Sinema is so far to the right that there's a danger the Democratic base could sit out the midterm rather than vote for her. She's unquestionably Schumer's worse recruit-- ever.

That said, the Republicans have their own Arizona problem. The GOP wants the race to come down to a race between mainstream conservative Martha McSally, who independent voters like, and far right Blue Dog Sinema, who many Democrats hate. But the Republicans might not get what they want. A new poll from the local ABC affiliate asked GOP voters who they prefer in the August primary and Republican strategists are ready to slit their wrists, McSally doesn't appear to be winning-- even though she's up against two far right lunatics who are splitting the far right lunatic vote:

• Kelli Ward (far right lunatic)- 36%
• Martha McSally (mainstream conservative)- 27%
• Joe Arpaio (far right lunatic)- 22%

This is disastrous news for the GOP, since independents are likely to rejected Ward for Sinema in November.

These latest numbers show a huge swing since a January poll, conducted the same day Arpaio announced his Senate run, which had the former Maricopa County sheriff in a dead heat with then-front-runner McSally. In the January 9 results, Ward came in with the lowest percentage of the three candidates.

So how does Sinema stack up against all of the Republican candidates in a head-to-head race in November?

According to the ABC15/OHPI polling data, the Democrat is out in front to fill the seat previously held by Republican Jeff Flake, and is outpacing her GOP rivals in each of their potential races.

In an election facing Ward, Sinema holds a 10% lead, but 10% of likely voters remain undecided. A matchup against McSally is slightly closer, with Sinema ahead by 6% and another 10% of voters still undecided.

When paired up in a race against Arpaio, Sinema takes a huge lead, with 59% to Arpaio's 33%, and only 8% of voters undecided.

In a historically red-leaning state, a Democrat in the lead may seem surprising. But OHPI polling expert Mike Noble says there are a couple factors boosting Sinema's standing.

“The issue we are consistently seeing in the numbers is that Democrats are unified, Republicans are less united, and the all-important Independent voters are trending anti-Republican/Trump” said Noble, managing partner and chief pollster at OHPI.

These polling numbers would be bad enough in any year for the Republicans. But in a wave year? Wrist slitting time! McConnell is ready to dump millions of dollars into the race for McSally, but not for Ward and Arpaio. As of the March 31 FEC reporting deadline Sinema had raised $6,370,867, spent $1,945,831 and is sitting on $6,688,670. McSally had raised $4,155,612, spent $3,893,324 and is sitting on $605,712. Arpaio reported nothing and Ward had raised $1,438,804, spent $1,140,730, and has just $350,002 cash on hand. (Neo-Nazi elements have spent $576,984 on behalf of Ward.)

It's now conceivable that the Democrats will hold onto vulnerable red-state seats (West Virginia, Indiana, North Dakota, Missouri) as well as purple state seats like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania and win red-held Tennessee, Arizona, Nevada and even Texas. That would give the Democrats a bigger majority in the Senate than the Republicans have now. McConnell would be eating crow-- and paying for his authoritarian procedural way of running the Senate as Schumer takes over... looking for vengeance. Conceivable.

Poor Jeff Flake Just Called It A Day

Today Jeff Flake announced his retirement with a withering blast at Señor Trumpanzee.""We must stop pretending that the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal... It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end. In this century, a new phrase to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order, that phrase being the new normal. That we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue with the tone set up at the top. We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals, we must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution the flagrant disregard for truth and decency. The reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve. None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal. We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that that is just the way things are now. If we simply become inured to this condition, thinking that it’s just politics as usual, then heaven help us. Without fear of the consequences and without consideration of the rules of what is politically safe or palatable, we must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal. Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified. And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy. Such behavior does not project strength because our strength comes from our values. It instead projects a corruption of the spirit and weakness. It is often said that children are watching. Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up? What are we going to say?" Listen to the whole incredible speech above.

John McCormack's look at what would have been Flake's grim-- but brave-- march towards likely defeat in the Arizona Republican primary for the Weekly Standard raised a very crucial question for our politics: "How much room is there in the GOP to criticize Donald Trump and to what extent is the party transforming itself into a cult of personality?" McCormack asked Flake "if there’s a point at which the Republican party will no longer be worth it. How many Kelli Wards and Roy Moores can it nominate before it’s time to start thinking about a new party? 'I don’t know,' Flake says. 'We’re not there yet.'" Republican voters in Arizona are unlikely to give Flake much choice. Every recent poll shows him losing to far right crackpot and fringe Bannon character Kelli Ward.

The most recent poll, by Google Consumer Surveys, shows Ward with 58% of GOP primary voters and Flake at 42%. It's his best showing all year-- and his only one that breaks out of the 20s and 30s. He's have a better shot in the general election, where Schumer has chosen Kyrsten Sinema to run. She has the worst voting record of any Democrat in the House and her ethics-free career is all about endemic corruption.

At Ward's kickoff event in Scottsdale last week, Bannon told the crowd that "There’s a revolt going on from Alabama to Arizona. This movement is working-class and middle-class people standing up against a permanent political class of global elitists." Ward, who has wrapped herself in the Trumpist mantle, said she would make Arizona and America great again by serving in the Senate "as a conservative, as a populist, as an Americanist, as a scurrilous nationalist," a disparaging reference to John McCain denouncing "spurious nationalism" in a speech the day before.

Clinging to Trump is a decent primary strategy for Ward but a risky general election move. Now the Arizona Republican Party will insert a more establishment figure in Flake's stead. Trump didn't even crack 50% in last year's presidential election. McCain and Romney had each scored 54% against Obama. Trump won but his margin was weak-- 1,252,401 (49.0%) to 1,161,167 (45.4%). The best shot for Ward general election would would come if the Democratic base figures out what a piece of crap Schumer is shoving down their throats. But can Ward's campaign criticize Sinema for being Republican-lite and for voting with Trump and Ryan too frequently?

As for Flake, it would have been hard to have imagined him coming back from his low poll numbers to overcome Trump's animosity. Most Republican voters in Arizona like Trump... and hate Flake for criticizing him.

Five short years ago, Flake cruised to victory in his first GOP Senate primary with nearly 70 percent of the vote. Known in the House of Representatives as a budget hawk who bucked congressional leaders and President George W. Bush by opposing earmarks, No Child Left Behind, and Medicare’s prescription-drug benefit, Flake had the backing of then-senator Jim DeMint, the most influential patron of Tea Party insurgents. “Jeff Flake is one of the strongest conservative leaders in Congress,” DeMint said in his 2012 endorsement. “Nobody has done more to advance the cause of freedom than Jeff Flake. Nobody.”

DeMint’s insurgency was best summed up by his comment before the 2010 midterm elections that he’d “rather have 40 Marco Rubios than 60 Arlen Specters” in the Senate. (Specter, a liberal Republican till then, had joined the Democratic party in 2009 rather than face a conservative challenger.) “If you want 60 Republicans, you’ve got to have at least 40 to start with who stand on principle,” DeMint explained. But the insurgents of 2010 are now the elitist establishmentarians of 2017. At least that’s how it appears to the likes of Steve Bannon, who thinks Flake, particularly in his criticism of President Trump, is standing on the wrong principles. The Bannon motto seems to be that he’d rather have 40 Kelli Wards than 60 Jeff Flakes in the Senate.

...[I]f you spend a few minutes talking to Flake or reading his August book, Conscience of a Conservative, it’s clear Flake has no interest in winning reelection by pretending to be someone he’s not. When I ask him after the tech summit on October 12 whether immigration reduces the wages of some Americans, Flake is blunt: “We need more robust legal immigration, and we need significant temporary worker programs, more than we have, to account for the labor shortages that we have, particularly in the high-tech area.” He writes in his book that he remains “very proud” of his participation in the Gang of Eight immigration reform bill that passed the Senate in 2013, divided the Republican party, and died in the House.

...In Trump’s first meeting with congressional Republicans after wrapping up the GOP nomination in 2016, he immediately recognized Flake. “You’ve been very critical of me,” Trump said, according to Flake. “Yes, I’m the other senator from Arizona-- the one who didn’t get captured-- and I want to talk to you about statements like that,” Flake replied, before asking about Trump’s comment that Mexico was sending rapists to the United States. Flake writes that Trump brushed off the question and told Flake he was going to lose reelection. “I had to inform him that I wasn’t on the fall ballot,” Flake writes. Trump may have just been off by two years.

The Arizona Republic's Dan Nowicki was treating Ward as the primary front-runner in his report on the race last week. That's going to change very quickly. "Ward's standing with the right has been bolstered by Steve Bannon," he wrote, but points out that she's so extreme and fringy that "she could help deliver the Senate seat to the Democrats in the general election. Because of that possible scenario, Ward is drawing comparisons to past conservative 'tea party' challengers such as Sharron Angle of Nevada, Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Mourdock of Indiana, who won Senate primaries but lost seats that more moderate Republicans might have been able to win."

Arizona GOP operatives see her as a conspiracy theory nut, a "nightmare candidate" and "a sure loser." Sabato's Crystal Ball refers to her as "Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle and Todd Akin all wrapped into one."

Flake: "There are hinges of history that happen, I hope we're nearing that, I hope there are enough people that will stand up, and I think as elected leaders it's our responsibility to do that." And the American fascist movement celebrated today. Bannon crowed, thinking about his own hinge of history: "Our movement will defeat you in primaries or force you to retire. The days of establishment Republicans who oppose the people's America First agenda are numbered."

The Are No Good Outcomes For Arizona In The 2018 Senate Election

Jeff Flake is a conservative. In fact, his career-long record in the House and Senate isn't just conservative; it's very, very conservative. He comes across as a likable enough guy for a politician; but he votes wrong on every important issue. There are Arizona Democrats-- and especially independents-- who admire him for bring one of the only Republicans with the intestinal fortitude to take on Trump and call him out on his bullshit-- he even wrote a book savaging Trump-- but just look at that voting record. No one who cares about healthcare or women's equality or economic justice or anything that makes someone a progressive can vote for the guy, no matter how anti-Trump he's being. And is being anti-Trump enough so that a great many Arizona Republicans have written him off. He's going to probably lose his primary, especially if its a head-to-head match-up with a Trumpist crackpot like Kelli Ward, who is announcing her official campaign today (with Bannon and Ingraham in tow). The co-founder of a revenge porn website, IsAnybodyDown, GOP lunatic Craig Brittain, doesn't count, but he's running too.

The latest polling in Arizona (last week) shows Ward beating him 58-42%-- and that's Flakes's best number in over a year! He's been endorsed by cronies who owe him-- like Marco Rubio, Joni Ernst, Mitt Romney and George W. Bush-- but Ward is a Mercer/Bannon candidate who's been endorsed by Señor Trumpanzee and the whole neo-fascist menagerie: Gorka, Hannity, Ingraham, Levin. Are Arizonans ready for Palin's bus chugging around their state? Flake is so cooked!

Yesterday the NY Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg described Flake as "the most endangered Senate Republican, with an approval rating in one recent poll of just 18 percent among Arizonans" and who has been savaged by Trump "as 'toxic' and 'a flake.'" He's being pressured from the right and the only good news he's had in months is that an always dependably clueless Chuck Schumer has handpicked a Democratic opponent, the most right-wing Democrat in the House, Kyrsten Sinema, who is not just ultra-conservative but also horrifyingly corrupt and completely inauthentic-- exactly what voters don't want. It's conceivable that even Kelli Ward could beat Sinema!

[Flake's] fate is an object lesson for other Republicans who might consider voicing dire thoughts about the president’s fitness: Cross Mr. Trump, and your political career could well be over.

Mr. Flake, who is known more for his decency than his independent streak, said he had no regrets.

In an interview here, he ticked off some of his earliest criticisms of the president-- from the days when Mr. Trump peddled the false theory that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, to the time Mr. Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” to his call for a complete ban on travel to the United States by Muslims-- before looking up and stopping himself.

“In which of those instances,” the senator asked, “should I not have spoken out? At what point should you not stand up and say, ‘This is not right; this is not conservative; this is not where Republicans ought to be?’”

Mr. Flake said he had known from the start that taking on Mr. Trump might do him political harm. Even before he declared the president’s brand of populism a corruption of conservative values, he anticipated a tough primary challenge, given his policy differences with Mr. Trump on issues like immigration, trade and Cuba.

“The truth is, if my only goal were to be elected, re-elected to mark time in the Senate, there are much easier paths,” he said.

Mr. Flake is not the Senate’s only vulnerable Republican; Senator Dean Heller of Nevada is also facing a tough re-election race. And Republicans will now have to field a candidate to succeed Mr. Corker, who announced late last month that he was not running next year.

Last weekend, Mr. Corker said his concerns about Mr. Trump were shared by nearly every Senate Republican, even if few have spoken out. Mr. Flake, by contrast, has put pen to paper with his criticism; his new book, Conscience of a Conservative, published in August, is a blistering indictment of the Republican Party and of a president who, despite record-low overall approval ratings, has retained the support of about 80 percent of his party.

Mr. Flake’s main primary challenger at the moment, Kelli Ward, made clear in an interview that she intended to paint Mr. Flake as “an obstructionist to the America First agenda that Donald Trump touted on the campaign trail, and that the American people want to see enacted.”

Andy Surabian, senior adviser to the Great America Alliance, a Trump-aligned group whose political action committee has been supportive of Ms. Ward, said Mr. Flake’s troubles were “entirely self-inflicted.”

“If Flake wants to know why he’s vulnerable, all he needs to do is look in the mirror,” said Mr. Surabian, who had a stint in the White House as deputy to Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist. He added: “No one told him to go out and be the face of the anti-Trump resistance in the Republican Party. No one told him to go out and write a book that was basically an anti-Trump screed. The reason the race is in play is because of Jeff Flake’s actions.”

Mr. Flake said he felt compelled to write the book because Republicans had lost their way with the rise of Mr. Trump. His assessment of the president is biting.

“We pretended the emperor wasn’t naked,” Mr. Flake wrote. “Even worse: We checked our critical faculties at the door and pretended that the emperor was making sense.”

While Mr. Corker had likened the White House to an “adult day care center” and said Mr. Trump was treating his office like a reality show, Mr. Flake said in the interview that he might not have used those words. But he clearly agrees with his Tennessee colleague.

“A conservative is conservative in demeanor and comportment-- not just policy,” he said. “And the way you conduct foreign policy as a conservative is that you are steady and measured and predictable. And that’s not what we have now.”

Such comments have not gone over well at home, said Mayor Jim Lane of Scottsdale. The mayor, who calls himself a conservative Republican, said he was not currently backing Mr. Flake, whom he views as exacerbating divisions within the party and undermining the president’s agenda.

“It’s difficult, particularly when there’s a lot of people who feel very, very strongly about the president’s agenda and party’s agenda,” Mr. Lane said, adding, “Any time we sense that is not a priority, for any of our delegation, that becomes a bit of a problem.”

Mr. Flake favors immigration and free trade-- stances that put him at philosophical odds not only with the president, but also with many Arizonans. In 2013, he was part of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” group of senators who put forth an immigration overhaul that would have offered immigrants in the country illegally a path to citizenship. It passed the Senate with 68 votes but died in the House. He also worked closely with Mr. Obama to open relations with Cuba.

...[D]espite Mr. Flake’s criticisms of Mr. Trump, he almost always votes with the president. (An analysis by FiveThirtyEight, the political blog, found that Mr. Flake had voted with Mr. Trump 91.5 percent of the time.)

“He wrote a book about the conscience of a libertarian, yet he’s voted along the lines of the things he has criticized,” Dr. Riley said. “So my only conclusion is he doesn’t have a conscience.”

...In his early years in Congress, he developed a reputation as a budget hawk who challenged party leaders to get rid of so-called earmarks, in which federal money is steered to lawmakers’ pet projects. But in the Senate, which he joined in 2013, Mr. Flake has not carved out much of a reputation, other than for being a nice guy.

“He’s going to have to define who he is, what his record is and what he’s accomplished,” said David Winston, a Republican strategist in Washington. “This is really going to be a vote about him and his incumbency.”

As to who he is, Mr. Flake puts it this way: “I’m a conservative in, I think, the traditional sense of the word: a Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan conservative that believes in limited government, economic freedom, free trade, pro-immigration. That’s the kind of conservative I am, and that’s my record.”

But is that the kind of conservative who is welcome in the Republican Party in the Trump era? Mr. Flake smiled wanly.

“That,” the senator said, “is the question.”

The Worst Person In The World-- The GOP Deserves Him... But Do The Rest Of Us?

Trumpist by Nancy Ohanian

A week or so ago, Señor Trumpanzee launched an Adderall-fueled tweet storm against his perceived enemies within the Republican Congress. He struck out especially hard against Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, one of 3 Republicans especially vulnerable in the 2018 midterms. Ironically, one of the reasons Flake is seen as son vulnerable is because he voted to repeal Obamacare and replace it with TrumpCare, which would kick millions of Americans off healthcare. Wednesday, asked by Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Political Rewind if Trump is inviting a primary challenge with his erratic behavior, Flake responded that "The direction he’s headed right now, just kind of drilling down on the base rather than trying to expand the base, you know, I think he’s inviting one... I think he could govern in a way that he wouldn’t."

Trump tweet-endorsed extremist crackpot Kelli Ward for Flake's seat and Trump's most extremist allies are on same page. On Wednesday Sean Hannity endorsed her on his radio show and earlier Trump's own Daddy Warbucks, neo-fascist Long Island billionaire Robert Mercer gave Ward's superPAC $300,000. But... Trump didn't give her a shout out-- let alone invited her up on stage-- when he was in Phoenix ranting and raving like a madman earlier this week. She was there working the crowd but Trump had already met with the GOP anti-Flake forces who are sceptical than anyone as obviously deranged as Ward can win a general election. How deranged? Watch this ad from McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund PAC. It's not possible a Democratic Party ad against her would be as harsh and demeaning:



Alex Isenstadt reported that Trump has been continuing his childish spat with Flake by actively plotting against him, driving the Senate Republicans bonkers and infuriating the people he will need to salvage his catastrophic legislative agenda and to save him from removal from office after an increasingly likely 2019 impeachment trial. "Before taking the stage in Phoenix on Tuesday evening for a campaign-style rally," wrote Isenstadt, Señor Trumpanzee "huddled backstage with state Treasurer Jeff DeWit and former state GOP Chairman Robert Graham. Both are considering running against Flake, an outspoken critic of the president who recently published an anti-Trump book, Conscience of a Conservative.

Trump ripped the Arizona senator during the brief meeting, calling him “the flake," according to three people who provided an account of the discussion. Trump also discussed the potential for a primary challenge to Flake and told DeWit and Graham, both of whom have aligned with the president, to get back to him about their interest in running.

Also participating in the huddle was Rep. Trent Franks, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus who appeared at the rally. At one point, Franks told the president that either DeWit or Graham would make strong challengers to Flake.

On Wednesday afternoon, Graham’s daughter posted a picture of the backstage meeting on her Instagram account.

Plotting against The Flake in Phoenix

Trump attacked Flake during his campaign-style speech Tuesday, though he did not mention the senator by name. The president described the first-term senator as “weak on [the] border, weak on crime.”

“Nobody knows who the hell he is!” Trump added.

Then, on Wednesday morning, the president launched a more explicit attack. “Phoenix crowd last night was amazing-- a packed house. I love the Great State of Arizona,” the president tweeted. “Not a fan of Jeff Flake, weak on crime & border!”

It was the second time in recent days that Trump had used his Twitter account to pummel the senator. Last week, the president tweeted that Flake was “toxic.”

Trump’s offensive represents a massive break from precedent. It is highly unusual for the president to attack and explore a primary challenge to a member of his own party, let alone one as politically vulnerable as Flake. Prior to Trump’s visit to the state, the White House had met privately with DeWit and Graham and former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who has formally launched a bid against the Arizona senator.

On Tuesday, as the president made his way to Phoenix, he traveled with DeWit on Air Force One.

The White House barrage-- and attention to potential primary challengers-- has infuriated senior Republicans and further opened a widening rift between congressional GOP leaders and the president. In the days leading up to the Phoenix rally, in anticipation of a Trump-led assault on the senator, a number of Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, released statements promising Flake their full support.

Ward, who attended the Tuesday rally, said the president’s visit had stoked widespread interest in the primary.

“I thought it was great,” she said after Trump concluded his remarks. “I thought what he said about Flake was exactly right.”

The trip is also sure to intensify the search for a Flake opponent. With some Trump supporters unsatisfied with Ward, a controversial figure who lost handily to GOP Sen. John McCain in a 2016 primary challenge, the quest is on for an alternative.

As he made his way to the rally, Don Tapia, a major Republican Party donor and one of Trump’s biggest financial backers in the state, said he didn’t know who he would back in the primary. But he said it wouldn’t be Ward.

“I will not support Kelli Ward,” Tapia said. “You can quote me on that.”

The photo of Trump and poor Theresa May that showed up in The Baffler this week is absolutely classic-- best Trump picture all day so far, capturing his essence perfectly. David Roth noted that dogs aren't embarrassed by the cone that Trump is wearing but are "inarguably inconvenienced by these cones, which is their purpose: the cones are prescribed by veterinarians because saying things like 'I’ll need you to try avoid licking these stitches for a week' or 'I’m going to ask you to stop gnawing on that bacterial infection on your ass' is not going to work. The dogs do not like this, and they also may not like engaging with their peer-dogs while wearing a goofy blunderbuss that keeps them from their habitual introductory b-hole assessments and self-administered kamikaze junk ablutions. But at some point there’s no real sense in guessing. You have probably gathered that this is about Donald Trump."

Among the segment of the population that’s put off by things like a president refusing to forcefully condemn Nazi rioters, this has raised some uncomfortable questions about Trump’s beliefs. Does he really share any or many of the beliefs with the racists and nationalists and racist-nationalists who made his campaign their cause, or is this a political calculation against criticizing a small but important part of his base? Was his decision to defend statues of famous slave masters a reflection of his perspective on history, or maybe a darkly strategic reading of the national political mood? Did he not know that what he said was historically incoherent and obviously wrong? It’s right to wonder, but we should be past asking these questions about this man at this point. The most significant thing to know about Donald Trump’s politics or process, his beliefs or his calculations, is that he is an asshole; the only salient factor in any decision he makes is that he absolutely does not care about the interests of the parties involved except as they reflect upon him. Start with this, and you already know a lot. Start with this, and you already know that there are no real answers to any of these questions.

It is not quite fair to say that Donald Trump lacks core beliefs, but to the extent that we can take apart these beliefs they amount to Give Donald Trump Your Money and Donald Trump Should Really Be on Television More. The only comprehensible throughline to his politics is that everything Trump says is something he’s said previously, with additional very’s and more-and-more’s appended over time; his worldview amounts to the sum of the dumb shit he saw on the cover of the New York Post in 1985, subjected to a few decades of rancid compounding interest and deteriorating mental aptitude. He watches a lot of cable news, but he struggles to follow even stories that have been custom built for people like him-- old, uninformed, amorphously if deeply aggrieved.

There’s a reason for this. Trump doesn’t know anything or really believe anything about any topic beyond himself, because he has no interest in any topic beyond himself; his evident cognitive decline and hyperactive laziness and towering monomania ensure that he will never again learn a new thing in his life. He has no friends and no real allies; his inner circle is divided between ostensibly scandalized cynics and theatrically shameless ones, all of whom hold him in low regard and see him as a potential means to their individuated ends. There is no help on the way; his outer orbit is a rotation of replacement-level rage-grandpas and defective, perpetually clammy operators.

Trump now “executes” by way of the The Junior Soprano Method. When he senses that his staff is trying to get him to do one thing, Trump defiantly does the opposite; otherwise he bathes in the commodified reactionary grievance of partisan media, looking for stories about himself. It takes days for his oafish and overmatched handlers to coax him into even a coded and qualified criticism of neo-Nazis, and an instant for him to willfully undo it. Of course he brings more vigor to the latter than the former; he doesn’t really understand why he had to do the first thing, but he innately and deeply understands why he did the second. The first is invariably about someone else-- some woman, there was a car accident, like during or maybe after that thing-- and therefore, as an asshole, he does not and cannot really care about it. The second is about him and therefore, as an asshole, he really, really does.

To understand Trump is also to understand his appeal as an aspirational brand to the worst people in the United States. What his intransigent admirers like most about him-- the thing they aspire to, in their online cosplay sessions and their desperately thirsty performances for a media they loathe and to which they are so helplessly addicted-- is his freedom to be unconcerned with anything but himself. This is not because he is rich or brave or astute; it’s because he is an asshole, and so authentically unconcerned. The howling and unreflective void at his core will keep him lonely and stupid until the moment a sufficient number of his vital organs finally resign in disgrace, but it liberates him to devote every bit of his being to his pursuit of himself. Actual hate and actual love, as other people feel them, are too complicated to fit into this world. In their place, for Trump and for the people who see in him a way of being that they are too busy or burdened or humane to pursue, are the versions that exist in a lower orbit, around the self. Instead of hate, there is simple resentment-- abject and valueless and recursively self-pitying; instead of love, there is the blank sucking nullity of vanity and appetite.



This is what an asshole is, and lord knows Trump is not the only one in his business, or our culture, who insistently bends every incident or issue back towards his sour and jealous self. Some of the people who do this even care at some level about the broader world, but because they are assholes believe that the solution to that world’s problems lies in paying more attention to one particular asshole and his or her ideas. Trump is not one of those people. The rest of the world is an abstraction to him, a market to exploit; there is no other person in it who is real to him. They’re all supplicants or subjects, fans or haters, but their humanity is transparently not part of the equation. What other people might want, or indeed the fact that they could want at all, is crowded out of the picture by the corroded and corrosive bulk of his horrible self.

There is no room for other people in the world that Trump has made for himself, and this is fundamental to the anxiety of watching him impose his claustrophobic and airless interior world on our own. Is Trump a racist? Yes, because that’s a default setting for stupid people; also, he transparently has no regard for other people at all. Does Trump care about the cheap-looking statue of Stonewall Jackson that some forgotten Dixiecrat placed in a shithole park somewhere he will never visit? Not really, but he so resents the fact that other people expect him to care that he develops a passionate contrary opinion out of spite. Does he even know about . . . Let me stop you there. The answer is no.

The answer is always no, and it will always be no because he does not care. Every lie, every evasion, every massive and blithely issued shock to the conscience Trump authors will only ever be about him. He will never be embarrassed by any of these things, because he cannot understand anyone’s response to them except as it relates to him. Slavery? That’s another thing that his very dishonest enemies want to blame him for. Racism? He’s been accused of it, and honestly it’s so ridiculous, so ridiculous. History? He’s in the business of making it, baby. Violence? Not his fault. People protesting? He doesn’t know them.

This is the horror at the hole of every asshole, and it is why Trump will never get better as a president or a person: it will always and only be about him. History matters only insofar as it brought him to this moment; the roaring and endless present in which he lives matters because it is where he is now; the future is the place in which he will do it all again. Trump’s world ends with him, and a discourse or a politics that is locked into scrutinizing or obsessively #resisting or otherwise chasing him will invariably end up as arid and abstracted and curdled as he is. More to the point, it’s a dead end. The shame an animal feels is secret to us.

Kelli Ward implies in her vicious and misleading new campaign ad-- featuring Señor Trumpanzee-- that Flake, who voted for TrumpCare-- was the cause of its failure by one vote. Liker Trump's, her deranged followers don't care about any reality except the one that is manufactured to conform with their crackpot delusions.

Will Trump's Interference Hand The Democrats The Arizona Senate Seat-- And A Senate Majority?

Painting by Nancy Ohanian

Señor Trumpanzee hasn't figured out Republican Party politics-- or GOP congressional primaries-- yet. He's terrible at it. But that hasn't stopped him from jumping in like some kind of a crazed baboon. A few weeks ago we mentioned that Trump's pre-adolescent vindictive, self-destructive nature is endangering Dean Heller's reelection bid in Nevada. Here's the ad that a Trump SuperPAC, which Pence beats the bushes to finance, ran in the Reno and Las Vegas media markets to scare not just Heller but any Republican daring to try to serve their constituents' interests instead of bowing down to Trump's insane megalomania:



Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has a long history-- mostly in the House-- as a right-of-center conservative. His record is very conservative but, unlike so many of his colleagues, not unhinged or deranged. He's a Mormon and his very vocal opposition to Trump seems to have been based on the same sense of decency and deep-seated beliefs that most Mormon leaders expressed during the election. Trump did significantly worse in Mormon communities than other Republicans did. In 2004, George W Bush took 80% of the Mormon vote. In 2012 Romney took 78%. The morally reprehensible Trump only managed to win 61% of the Mormon vote nationally.

We have written before than Trump's political operatives are hoping to defeat Flake in his 2018 reelection bid, preferably with neo-fascist Trumpist Jeff DeWit, Arizona state Treasurer. Another extremist who would likely be fine with the Trump Regime is extremist former state Senator Kelli Ward, another neo-fascist crackpot. When she challenged John McCain last year, McCain pulverized her 302,532 (51.2%) to 235,988 (39.9%).

A Republican mid-November poll looked sketchy for Flake. Trump's favorable rating among Republicans then was 82% and Flake's was just 30%. Wade scored 19% and DeWit came in at 35%. Head-to-head match-ups showed Ward tying Flake 35-35% and DeWit beating him 42-33%. DeWit would have also won a 3-ways primary:

• DeWit- 38%
• Ward- 15%
• Flake- 30%

In February, Ward released a poll of likely Republican primary voters from Political Marketing International. It shows Ward pulling ahead of Flake in a head-to-head match-up, 30% to 23%. Ward didn't released any polling that included DeWit, but she did boast that she was the "most conservative member of the Arizona State Senate in 2015" and reminded whomever reads her stuff that Flake is "one of President Trump's biggest foes."

[Note: Political Marketing Strategies is not a well-regarded firm and is pretty much considered one of those companies that delivers whatever results they're paid to deliver. Ward paid them $5,000 for this poll. She is touting it in a press release claiming Flake is "in freefall."]

That said, Flake, a freshman, could be in trouble with Arizona Republican primary voters. He's been a tad too independent-minded for most knee-jerk Republicans and if Trump really decides to make an example of him, he could be toast, even though Trump doesn't have an impressive track record interfering in GOP primaries. A North Carolina incumbent he strongly backed, Renee Ellmers, was eviscerated, barely coming in third in a 3-way race (George Holding- 53.4%, Renee Ellmers- 23.6%, Greg Brannon- 23.0%, just 207 votes separating the latter two). And Thursday, Trump's candidate to replace Mike Pompeo in KS-04, Alan Cobb, was badly beaten by run-of-the-mill establishment Republican Ron Estes.

Trump won Arizona last year-- but not by much. McCain and Romney each beat Obama in Arizona 54-45%. Trump squeaked by 49.5-45.4%. It wasn't that Hillary did better than Obama-- she didn't-- it was that voters liked Trump less than other GOP nominees. Last November Trump got 1,021,154 votes the same day that McCain was being reelected senator with 1,089,324 votes (53.4%). Trump was a drag on the GOP ticket across the state. He's less popular among Arizona voters today. The trick for a politician like Flake is to hold onto Trump's base while expanding it by differentiating himself from Trump. Monday morning, Alex Isenstadt explained to Politico readers how Trump is making that very hard for Flake to do. Trump, who has threatened to spend $10 million of his own money-- an empty threat; Trump is too cheap-- against Flake, and White House political operatives have been meeting with Flake foes.

That's DeWit in the back with a pack of Trumpanzees

Since taking office, Trump has spoken with Arizona state Treasurer Jeff DeWit, a top official on his 2016 campaign, on at least two occasions, according to two sources familiar with the talks. More recently, since June, White House officials have also had discussions with former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who has announced her bid, and former Arizona GOP Chairman Robert Graham, who like DeWit is exploring a campaign.

At a Republican National Committee meeting outside of San Diego in May, David Bossie, Trump’s deputy campaign manager and the president of the influential conservative outside group Citizens United, told Graham that either he or DeWit would likely get substantial backing from conservatives should either enter the contest, according to three people familiar with the conversation.

“Maybe [Flake] should get back on the Trump team. A lot of people believe in Trump’s policies," said former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a prominent immigration hard-liner who backed Trump, noting that the president remained popular in Arizona. “There’s a silent majority that’s still there, and still in this state, so watch out.”

Graham, who has begun reviewing polling and purchasing campaign website addresses, was present at a meeting this spring of top GOP donors in Arizona that was also attended by Chris Bannon, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s younger brother and a University of Arizona official. At the top of the agenda, according to three people familiar with the event, was a prospective Graham primary against Flake. During the meeting, which was also attended by Arizona Cardinals executive Michael Bidwill, several donors expressed mounting frustration with the incumbent.

Those familiar with the gathering stressed that Chris Bannon, who is widely viewed as a conduit to his powerful brother, was more of a listener than active participant and did not articulate his feelings about a Flake challenge.

...Trump is keeping close tabs on Flake’s fortunes back home. During a meeting with a small group of state Republican Party chairs in the Oval Office on Tuesday, he asked Arizona GOP Chairman Jonathan Lines for an update on the race. Lines responded by telling the president that the state party did not get involved in primaries, according to three people familiar with the exchange.

“The mutual dislike runs deep,” said Constantin Querard, a Republican strategist who oversaw Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign in the state. “That both complicates [Flake’s] path to re-election by putting him at odds with much of the Arizona GOP, and it makes it very likely that if he gets a primary challenger that the Trump team likes, that challenger will be funded and supported in a way that makes beating Flake the most likely outcome.”

...An administration-backed primary challenge to Flake would also further inflame tensions with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who over the last several weeks has had several run-ins with the White House over political planning. McConnell, who is fiercely protective of GOP incumbents and has vowed to protect those facing primaries, recently became enraged when a Trump-sanctioned outside group launched an advertising blitz targeting Republican Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, who was also critical of the president during the 2016 campaign, over his refusal to back the Obamacare repeal plan.

Even so, there has been ongoing talk at the White House about how a prospective race would play out. Among the questions raised, according to two people who have discussed the matter with the administration directly, surrounds the candidacy of Ward, a brash conservative who was crushed by McCain in a 2016 primary. A well-known figure in the state, she could siphon support from DeWit or Graham, both of whom are regarded as more viable candidates.

...Among the president’s most vocal supporters, the feeling of betrayal is particularly intense.

“He’s the president, so we should stick by him, especially on the Republican side,” said Arpaio, noting that Flake was one of a small group of senators who had vocally opposed Trump.

Yet the complaints about Flake extend to other perceived apostasies, including his 2016 push to pass a bipartisan gun control bill, his openness to negotiate with former President Barack Obama over a nuclear pact with Iran, and his push to lift the U.S. embargo on travel to Cuba. While his supporters praise him as an independent-minded lawmaker who charts his own path, Flake’s detractors deride him as a grandstander-- one all too willing to poke his party in the eye.

Many of those in the state who provided Trump with financial backing in 2016 have begun talking up the possibility of finding a primary challenger, with DeWit and Graham among those most frequently mentioned. Others hold out hope that GOP Rep. Martha McSally, a rising star, or former Gov. Jan Brewer, a vigorous Trump backer, will enter the race.

Don Shooter, a state legislator and an outspoken backer of the president, predicted that a Flake challenger would immediately be able to raise between $10 million and $15 million from donors eager to see the incumbent unseated. “They’re motivated to take Jeff Flake out,” he said.

Among those Flake has rankled: Paradise Valley philanthropist Don Tapia, one of the most sought-after Republican donors in the state, who donated over $100,000 to pro-Trump causes in 2016 and also helped to bankroll his inauguration. Tapia was a benefactor of Flake’s 2012 Senate run but, according to multiple Arizona Republicans, has recently spoken of backing someone else in next year’s primary. (Tapia did not respond to a request for comment.)

"He ran into a big storm coming out against Trump,” Ed Robson, an Arizona real estate developer and major GOP donor who contributed to a pro-Trump super PAC, said of the senator. “This being a big Trump area, he probably made a mistake doing that."

The likely Democratic nominee is Phoenix mayor Greg Stanton, a garden variety establishment Democrat, but there's always the chance Schumer will make a fatal error-- he's extremely prone to them-- and persuade the most Republican-like Democrat in Congress, arch-conservative-- and very corrupt-- Kyrsten Sinema to run. That would immediately put Arizona out of reach for Democrats for 2018. And now we're hearing Trumpists in Tennessee want to back a primary by far right lunatic Mark Green, an extremely bigoted state senator who Trump unsuccessfully tried to appoint Army Secretary, against Bob Corker.

Alienating The Base-- A Tale Of Two Primaries... Arizona And New Jersey

Many Arizona Republicans see Jeff Flake through this Alt-Fact lens

Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has a long history-- mostly in the House-- as a right-of-center conservative. His record is very conservative but, unlike so many of his colleagues, not unhinged or deranged. He's a Mormon and his very vocal opposition to Trump seems to have been based on the same sense of decency and deep-seated beliefs that most Mormon leaders expressed during the election. Trump did significantly worse in Mormon communities than other Republicans did. In 2004, George W Bush took 80% of the Mormon vote. In 2012 Romney took 78%. Trump won 61% of the Mormon vote nationally.

We have written before than Trump's political operatives are hoping to defeat Flake in his 2018 reelection bid, preferably with neo-fascist Trumpist Jeff DeWit, Arizona state Treasurer. Another extremist who would likely be fine with the Trump Regime is extremist former state Senator Kelli Ward, another neo-fascist crackpot. When she challenged John McCain last year, McCain pulverized her 302,532 (51.2%) to 235,988 (39.9%).

A Republican mid-November poll looked sketchy for Flake. Trump's favorable rating among Republicans then was 82% and Flake's was just 30%. Wade scored 19% and DeWit came in at 35%. Head-to-head match-ups showed Ward tying Flake 35-35% and DeWit beating him 42-33%. DeWit would have also won a 3-ways primary:

• DeWit- 38%
• Ward- 15%
• Flake- 30%

Over the weekend Ward released a new poll of likely Republican primary voters from Political Marketing International. It shows Ward pulling ahead of Flake in a head-to-head match-up, 30% to 23%. Ward didn't released any polling that included DeWit, but she did boast that she was the "most conservative member of the Arizona State Senate in 2015" and reminded whomever reads her stuff that Flake is "one of President Trump's biggest foes."

[Note: Political Marketing Strategies is not a well-regarded firm and is pretty much considered one of those companies that delivers whatever results they're paid to deliver. Ward paid them $5,000 for this poll. She is touting it in a press release claiming Flake is "in freefall."]

That said, Flake, a freshman, could be in trouble with Arizona Republican primary voters. He's been a tad too independent-minded for most knee-jerk Republicans and if Trump really decides to make an example of him, he could be toast, even though Trump doesn't have an impressive track record interfering in GOP primaries. A North Carolina incumbent he strongly backed, Renee Ellmers, was eviscerated, barely coming in third in a 3-way race (George Holding- 53.4%, Renee Ellmers- 23.6%, Greg Brannon- 23.0%, just 207 votes separating the latter two). And Thursday, Trump's candidate to replace Mike Pompeo in KS-04, Alan Cobb, was badly beaten by run-of-the-mill establishment Republican Ron Estes.

Across the country, if not quite across the political spectrum, one of the very worst and most corrupt far-right Democrats elected in November, worthless Blue Dog, Josh Gottheimer (NJ) is well aware he's going to attract major Republican opposition in 2018. NJ-05 sits on the entire northern border of New Jersey with New York, from the Hudson River in the east to just outside of Port Jervis in the west, and the entire northwestern border with Pennsylvania from Milford to beyond the Delaware Water Gap. It's an affluent R+4 district in blue New Jersey. Over 70% of the population is in northern Bergen County's suburbs and towns like Paramus, Hackensack, Teaneck, Mahwah and Lodi (the Soprano's Bada Bing club town). In 2012 Romney beat Obama there by 3 points and this year Hillary managed to have beaten Trump 48.8% to 47.7%.

Gottheimer beat the incumbent Republican, bizarre extremist Scott Garrett, 156,863 (50.5%) to 146,643 (47.2%). Garrett managed to win in Sussex, Warren and Passaic counties but Bergen County voters were sick and tired of him and gave Gottheimer the 18,000-plus vote cushion he needed. Gottheimer immediately joined the Blue Dogs and started voting with the Republicans. Gottheimer-- who got more money from the banksters than any other non-incumbent running for the House this year ($889,419), outraised Garrett $4,288,192 to 2,055,513. Ryan and the NRCC were happy to see Garrett lose and they shut off the party spigots. Pelosi and the DCCC wasted over $3.8 million boosting a corrupt reactionary will will almost never vote for any progressive legislation. His ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is one of the worst of any Democrat's in the House-- 20% which basically means he's voting with Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy on virtually every one of their agenda items, giving them the opportunity to call their destructive proposals "bipartisan." Gottheimer is already damaging the Democratic brand and alienating Democratic voters. Obviously, he hasn't been involved with any resistance to Trump at all. Bergen County activists already hate him and are unlikely to support his reelection bid-- one that the Observer speculates could be a huge national circus, featuring xenophobe and racist asshole 72 year old Lou Dobbs, a longtime New Jersey resident lives in Sussex County, on a 300-acre horse farm in Wantage. The Observer analysis of the 2018 race is interesting, except that it's based on entirely incorrect numbers. For example they claim Garrett won 125,861 to 101,859 but that was before absentee and mail in ballots were counted and he actually won 156,863 to 146,643. So I'm going to throw out their faulty numbers are just use the bits of the sloppy journalism they got right.

In 2016... more voters fell off from Trump to Garrett than Clinton to Gottheimer. One can reasonably conclude that Gottheimer will be hurt more by running without a presidential candidate atop the ticket than the Republican challenger will be.

Voter registration (as of 11/30/2016): Republicans 144,959; Democrats 142,717; Unaffiliated 222,193. So it’s a slight GOP edge, but off-year elections tend to favor Republicans, though not necessarily in the first off-year election of a Republican presidency, when voters may be looking to apply a “check” on the president’s power.

...Prior to Gottheimer, the last time a Democrat won the GOP-leaning 5th was in 1974, when Andy Maguire upset 11-term incumbent Bill Widnall in the Watergate year. Maguire held on until 1980, when Roukema washed him out in the Reagan tidal wave.

The biggest question here, of course, is whether the GOP can lure a marquee candidate like Dobbs to run. With a huge national profile and over a million Twitter followers, he’d start with a strong base of support. But a Congressional seat might not seem like an attractive prize to a guy who’s been hosting his own show on national television for decades and has a closet full of Emmy and Peabody Awards.

Republicans will then have to see if Garrett runs again. He’s never been popular among establishment Republicans-- he ran close primaries against Roukema in 1998 and 2000. Garrett lost because of his own quirks and oddities, not because of his party affiliation. His odd refusal to pay dues to the Party unless it disavowed support for gay candidates sent buckets of national money into the coffers of Gottheimer, which hurt all Republicans in the district, especially the more moderate Bergen GOPers.

Two conservative northwest NJ Senators live in the district: Mike Doherty, 53 (R-Oxford) and Steve Oroho, 58 (R-Franklin). Doherty was the first NJ GOP pol to endorse Donald Trump. He’s encouraged speculation of runs of his own for statewide office since 2008, but he never pulls the trigger. Others include Assemblyman Parker Space, 48 (R-Wantage) and former state Labor Commissioner Hal Wirths, 51 (R-Wantage).

Of strong interest will be whether Bergen can come up with a high-quality, consensus candidate-- with or without Garrett. The bench is a bit depleted up there, but strong choices might include Assemblywoman Holly Shepisi (R-River Vale), 45, seeking fourth term in the Assembly; Assemblyman Robert Auth (R-Old Tappan), 60, seeking third term in the Assembly; Republican State Chairman Samuel Raia, also the Mayor of Saddle River. Of these, Shepisi probably holds the strongest crossover appeal, while Raia has personal wealth.

Bergen lining up behind a consensus candidate might just be enough to ensure that person is the nominee. But at this writing, the BCRO might be in denial. Its website still shows Garrett as the Congressman.

Gottheimer deserves a primary opponent but I doubt if he has one it will be serious enough to deny him the renomination. There are local activists working to recruit someone to run against him. He deserves to be weakened enough so that he loses. He is inexorably dragging the congressional Democrats further right and further into Wall Street corruption. He could solve the Republicans' problem in NJ-05 by switching parties; it would make the most sense... and he wouldn't even have to change his voting habits.