Source: Politics<\/p>\n
PRESCOTT VALLEY, Ariz. \u2014 It was billed as a split screen proxy war in the desert: Donald Trump versus Mike Pence in a midterm election skirmish that would provide an early indication about the future of the GOP.<\/p>\n
It ended up more like a varsity-JV scrimmage.<\/p>\n
The Republican Party landscape, in Arizona at least, remains tilted sharply towards Trump. And those who came to watch the former president speak seemed to know it.<\/p>\n
They rallied on Friday in a bunting-clad arena wearing \u201cStill my president\u201d T-shirts, offering wild conspiracies about the last election and certainty that Trump would win the next one.<\/p>\n
For them, Pence \u2014 and every vestige of the old, establishment wing of the GOP \u2014 is in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was a good guy,\u201d one attendee said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have an opinion on [Pence],\u201d said another, who was eager to persuade Trump to \u201chead up a liquidation of the federal government\u201d if elected.<\/p>\n
Leaving the rally with her 11-year-old grandson \u2014 and stopping for a T-shirt that was too big for him, but that he said he could tuck in \u2014 Georgianna Bruso said she \u201cdidn\u2019t even know\u201d Pence was in the state.<\/p>\n
Pence was, indeed, there \u2014 having come to the state to support Karrin Taylor Robson, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor against the Trump-endorsed Kari Lake, who still insists, falsely, that Trump won the election in 2020.<\/p>\n
But even the setting of the stop underscored how tilted this \u201cproxy-battle\u201d would be.<\/p>\n
The former vice president appeared with Robson in Maricopa County, where Trump supporters conducted an \u201caudit\u201d of the last election that was derided by honest observers as a farce.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the largest county in Arizona, the state where Ron Watkins, a celebrity in the QAnon conspiracy world suspected of being Q<\/a>, is running for Congress.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, the state Republican Party censured Arizona\u2019s Republican state House speaker, Rusty Bowers<\/a>, for testifying to the Jan. 6 committee about Trump\u2019s efforts to overturn the election. Walt Blackman, a Republican state lawmaker running for Congress, recently made headlines for his suggestion that abortion is tied to efforts to exterminate Black people<\/a>.<\/p>\n In parts of Arizona, said Chuck Coughlin, a veteran Republican strategist based in Phoenix, \u201cyou can say some crazy shit\u201d and still be viable.<\/p>\n Or win a statewide party primary.<\/p>\n To Trump\u2019s supporters, it doesn\u2019t matter how much damage was inflicted on the state party during his tenure. Republicans lost two Senate seats and a presidential race for the first time since 1996.<\/p>\n It was the prospect that he would run again that they were cheering when they arrived. And it wouldn\u2019t change Trump\u2019s supporters\u2019 minds about him if his preferred candidate for governor, Lake, loses to Pence\u2019s choice in the primary on Aug. 2.<\/p>\n Some said they wouldn\u2019t believe it if she did. Lake herself has suggested she might not accept the results of her election<\/a> \u2014 a line derived from the Trump playbook.<\/p>\n In the run-up to Trump\u2019s rally with Lake, Stan Barnes, a former state lawmaker and longtime Republican consultant, described the Trump and Pence appearances in Arizona as \u201clike some sort of celestial planet lineup that you witness every millennium \u2026 That\u2019s what it feels like on the ground in Arizona.\u201d<\/p>\n What was happening, he added, was a slow-motion, real-time \u201ctearing of the fabric in the Republican Party that\u2019s there for us to see. We have Donald Trump doing his thing with his candidate \u2026 The voters in the Republican Party in Arizona may not be aware of this yet, but they\u2019re not just choosing a candidate to represent the party in the general election. They\u2019re choosing the actual direction of the party.\u201d<\/p>\n But when asked if Trump could come out a loser either way, Barnes said, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so.\u201d<\/p>\n Robson, the wealthy real estate developer and former member of the state\u2019s board of regents, has refused to say that the 2020 election was stolen. But in a nod to Trump, she has said she doesn\u2019t think the election was fair<\/a>. She has drawn closer to Lake, the early frontrunner in the primary, not by criticizing her for falsehoods about the 2020 election \u2014 a centerpiece of Lake\u2019s campaign \u2014 but by depicting her as an inauthentic conservative.<\/p>\n