ICYMI: Kari Lake 2.0 wants a new 2022 election? So much for moving on [AZ Central]

“Just the thing that national Republicans have worried about.“

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT 

AZ Central: Kari Lake 2.0 wants a new 2022 election? So much for moving on
By Laurie Roberts
November 16, 2023

• Well, that may just be the shortest political pivot in history. 

• Kari Lake is trying to quietly mend fences with traditional Republicans, the McCainites who have been walking around for lo’ the last year with Lake’s celebrated stake in their hearts.

• She’s reportedly been advised by national Senate Republicans, who are hoping to regain a foothold in Arizona, to move on from the election conspiracy theories that have become her signature grievance. But … she just can’t help herself.

• On Wednesday, Lake asked the Arizona Court of Appeals to invalidate the results of the 2022 election and order a revote.
  
  
• Republican-run Maricopa County, she charges, “apparently rigged the November 2022 Election to fail on Election Day.”

• She claims to have new evidence that shows county sabotage and, of course, there’s the old “evidence” — all of which was rejected by a judge after allowing her two trials to make her case.

• Kari Lake 2.0, it seems, bears a remarkable resemblance to the Kari Lake Arizona voters have come to know … and reject. It’s likely just the thing that national Republicans have worried about.
  
  
• Moderates aren’t sure she can moderate…she must win over the more moderate wing of the party she has spent two years attacking — something a number as of Arizona political operatives have predicted will happen.

• Apparently, they are not the only ones who worry about Lake’s ability to move from MAGA to the mainstream. “Outwardly, GOP operatives in D.C. and Arizona hope Lake’s recalibration works,” Politico reported last month. “Privately, they are not sure. She could easily be lured into discussing a variety of issues that could turn off voters beyond her base.”

• “It has been said that ‘democracy dies in darkness,’” her attorneys wrote in Wednesday’s filing. “Unless corrected by the Court, democracy in Maricopa and in Arizona will die in plain sight.”

• That’ll play well to her MAGA base, but among the traditional Republicans and independents she needs…? Time will tell but eyes were rolling all over the Valley on Wednesday, when her request for a new trial hit public view.

• “This isn’t about unity. It’s about her my-way-or-the-highway political popularity,” one of those Republicans savaged by Lake told me on Wednesday.

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