Six weeks ago, she looked like the future. Today, she looks like the saddest dead-ender.
I’m talking about Kari Lake, who was poised to be one of the GOP’s brightest rising stars heading into the 2022 midterms. Lake had all the marks of a winner, but after losing a close election, she has doubled down on a losing bet: election denial.
We saw it again at this weekend’s Turning Point USA AmericaFest event. “I know that right now we can identify as anything we want to identify, but I want you to know that I identify as a proud election-denying deplorable!” Lake said at the conference on Sunday.
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She continued, “And my pronouns are…I/won.” She also called for Maricopa County election officials to be “locked up” and made obscene gestures at the media.
Meanwhile, on a recently surfaced video from the state of Mar-a-Lago, Lake said the people who stole her election “messed with the wrong bitch.”
As you can see, Lake has become something akin to a one-hit wonder who keeps playing the same old tune for the same tired applause. The song was never that great to begin with and, in any case, it was a cover. All this to say Lake’s reboot of Trump’s 2020 flop isn’t just laughably bad, it’s also derivative and outdated.
Talk about being late to the party. Doubling down on election denial after Republicans choked in the 2022 midterms (as a result of Trump’s reverse Midas touch and “candidate quality” issues) is sort of like deciding to invest big in FTX cryptocurrency… today.
So, why do it? Losing an election isn’t necessarily a political death sentence. Lake didn’t lose by much, and a comeback might be possible. She could, for example, still run for the U.S. Senate in Arizona during the next cycle (where Sen. Krysten Sinema’s decision to leave the Democratic Party opens up the potential for Democrats to split their votes).
But instead of taking her lumps, learning from her mistakes, and building bridges in Arizona, Lake is spending all her time playing the victim and whining—all while hunkered down at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida (that is, when she’s not on stage at some right-wing political conference).
Now, you might think that Lake is crazy like a fox. After all, she’s on stage at TPUSA getting applause and adoration. It’s easy to imagine that Lake was running for something—not for governor, but for fame. In this regard, she won.
But for how long? Will there be a market in five years for a 58-year-old former TV anchor whose claim to fame is losing a race for governor? Former Tea Party heroine Jan Brewer actually was the governor of Arizona. And I’m not sure I could pick her out of a lineup.
Even Sarah Palin, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee in 2008, was only able to cling on to her A-list status for so long. She just lost twice in the same calendar year in elections to be Alaska’s at-large House representative. The shelf life for a failed gubernatorial nominee is likely even shorter.
In many ways, Lake’s predicament is similar to Trump’s. She holds no office that might make her inherently relevant or newsworthy. She has no big ideas or insights to champion, nor does she have moral authority. She does have charisma—but she is now competing against a growing crowd of right-wing entertainers who are just as willing to say and do outrageous things.
And (like Trump) she is still bitterly clinging to a lie that is simultaneously bogus, dated, and solipsistic.
Her predicament is even sadder, however, when you consider what might have been. As recently as mid-October, Megyn Kelly tweeted of Lake, “Deny this woman’s power, charisma, smarts, savvy (& chance of winning) at your own peril.”
It’s easy to mock that statement today, but Kelly wasn’t wrong. I argued that if Lake won the Arizona governorship (which, at the time, seemed likely), she might parlay that into a plausible presidential bid… in 2024.
That was contingent on Lake winning, which she obviously didn’t do. Still, I can’t get past her decision to hitch her post-2022 star to Trump’s election-denial wagon.
At a time when Trump is losing market share to the likes of Ron DeSantis, there are safer ways to diversify, garner attention, and maintain right-wing street cred. Make a big deal about Drag Queen Story Hour. Complain about Big Tech and viewpoint discrimination. Get worked up about a “caravan” of immigrants heading for your town.
Any of these culture war outrages are likely to have a longer shelf life than her current backward-looking harangue.
Don’t take my word for it. Republicans keep saying they are bored with the Big Lie. A college student at the TPUSA event, for example, told Politico it was an “easy” choice to pick DeSantis over Trump because “All [Trump] does is talk about 2020.”
If it’s not working for Trump, who is losing relevance by the day, why would it work for a Trump imitator?
