Post by trueblue on Aug 16, 2022 19:42:29 GMT
'Juvenile wisecracks from Arizona's Kari Lake overshadow her disturbing agenda'
During a Sunday night political rally that began with a prayer, Arizona's far-right Republican gubernatorial nominee, Kari Lake, quickly dived into insult comedy. The former Fox affiliate news anchor suggested her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs, looks better in a mask than without, made Trumpian puns about the names of other states' Democratic governors (Gavin Nuisance, Gretchen Witchmer), and, not least, declared that both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump possess "Big Dick Energy."
Somewhat lost beneath the juvenile wisecracks and name-calling were the few but troubling policy positions Lake mapped out. Should she win the governor's office in November, she said, she would ban homeless people from sleeping in tents near roadways; push for Arizona to return to a two-tiered education system, shunting some students away from general studies and into vocational ed; and "hire more cops and build more jails."
The purpose of Sunday's "Unite & Win" rally, hosted in downtown Phoenix by the right-wing political action group Turning Point Action — a spinoff of the youth-oriented organization Turning Point USA — was to use DeSantis' star-power to amplify the campaigns of Lake and far-right Republican U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, two weeks after both won their primary races. It's hardly the first time DeSantis has rallied on behalf of out-of-state Republicans. This April he appeared on a "tele-townhall" with Betsy DeVos to promote a school voucher plan in Michigan that Trump's former education secretary helped launch. But it's more evidence that DeSantis' support is becoming at least as valuable as Donald Trump's, if not more.
Somewhat lost beneath the juvenile wisecracks and name-calling were the few but troubling policy positions Lake mapped out. Should she win the governor's office in November, she said, she would ban homeless people from sleeping in tents near roadways; push for Arizona to return to a two-tiered education system, shunting some students away from general studies and into vocational ed; and "hire more cops and build more jails."
The purpose of Sunday's "Unite & Win" rally, hosted in downtown Phoenix by the right-wing political action group Turning Point Action — a spinoff of the youth-oriented organization Turning Point USA — was to use DeSantis' star-power to amplify the campaigns of Lake and far-right Republican U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, two weeks after both won their primary races. It's hardly the first time DeSantis has rallied on behalf of out-of-state Republicans. This April he appeared on a "tele-townhall" with Betsy DeVos to promote a school voucher plan in Michigan that Trump's former education secretary helped launch. But it's more evidence that DeSantis' support is becoming at least as valuable as Donald Trump's, if not more.
Turning Point Action's chief operating officer Tyler Bowyer set the stage for the adulation, declaring DeSantis "the beast of the East" and "the best governor that we have in this country." Another speaker, conservative talk show host James T. Harris, praised Lake by saying he believed she was cut from the same cloth as DeSantis. And Lake herself enthused that, after she'd heard people describe her as "the DeSantis of the West," she'd considered it the "greatest compliment" she could imagine, short of being called "Trump in a dress."