The Republican Party’s Donald Trump Problem Has a New Face: Kari Lake

Unwilling to accept her narrow, but conclusive defeat in Arizona’s gubernatorial race, Kari Lake is doubling down on the strategy that likely contributed to her failure. The rising MAGA star over the weekend filed a lawsuit challenging Governor-elect Katie Hobbs’ victory, suggesting the election process was “illegitimate” — a charge she’s also leveled against the 2020 election. “Our sacred vote was trampled on,” Lake tweeted, describing her filing in terms Donald Trump himself might — as “one of the strongest Election Lawsuits in history.” It was an unsurprising move for Lake, whose political persona hinges almost entirely on election denialism and other Trump retreads. But it’s also one that provides a window into the broader problem plaguing the GOP: The candidates who most energize its base are the ones who are perhaps most unpalatable to the broader electorate. 

Lake, as the Washington Post reported in an autopsy of her failed campaign Monday, is perhaps the best embodiment of that dynamic: Encouraged by aides to move to the middle after the primary in a bid for independent and moderate voters, the Trump acolyte ignored their advice and continued to run a campaign based on election denialism, MAGA purity tests, and culture war nonsense. It made her a national figure — a Fox News regular buzzed about as a potential Trump running mate. It also made her a failed candidate. “It was both a collapse and, now in hindsight, it was a failed campaign from the beginning,” a top Arizona Republican told the Post. “I don’t really know what to say beyond outrageous arrogance and never getting out of primary mode.”

“This election wasn’t stolen,” the high-ranking Republican added. “It was given away.”

There were a lot of reasons Republicans underperformed in the 2022 midterms, including voter outrage over the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling and stronger-than-expected enthusiasm for the Democrats. But one of the biggest factors working against the GOP was their party leader, who shepherded a flock of loyalists through the primaries, only for them to mostly fail in high-profile general election races. Not only has the majority of Americans who oppose Trump seemed to grow this past cycle — it’s also becoming apparent that his conspiracy theories about the election process, particularly around early and mail-in voting, are working against his own base. 

That’s got Republicans reflecting on their relationship with Trump, maybe more than at any other point of his reign over the party. Former sycophants like Mike Pence are getting bolder in their criticism and in some cases hinting at mounting their own runs for the GOP nomination. Rank-and-file Republicans are casting about for new leaders: Ron DeSantis? Glenn Youngkin? Tim Scott? And the party is trying to reverse course on mail-in and early voting, which Trump has targeted for more than two years now as a source of fraud…and likely hurt his own party in the process. “It’s just common sense,” Andy Reilly, a member of the Republican National Committee from Pennsylvania, told NBC News. “Any party that votes for 50 days is going to beat the party that only votes for 13 hours.”

But actually breaking with Trump — diminished and isolated as he may be — could continue to prove difficult for a party that has spent years now coddling him and desperately seeking his approval: “That hard, 30 percent of the Republican base doesn’t want to,” as former RNC Chairman Michael Steele told Politico Sunday. “When the state party operations are run by those very same people, they’re not going to go away from Trump that easily.” 

Indeed, the party apparatus, including a panel tasked with figuring out what went wrong in November, is largely still beholden to Trump — and, it seems, to the kind of politics general election voters mostly rejected in 2020 and 2022. Its members can talk all they want about moving on. But until it actually casts out the likes of Trump and Lake, the GOP seems likely to continue down paths that have already led to failure. ”I don’t know how the party exorcizes that demon, because if you want to heal yourself, you’ve got to want to get better, right?” as Steele said. “And if you’re not willing to do the things that are required to make you get better, to help you get better, you’re going to stay sick.”