Lake is not a particularly policy-focused candidate from what I can tell. I personally don't like her all that much btw, she's assertive, but in a needlessly aggressive, antagonistic fashion.
Anyway, we don't know how much her strong focus on election denialism helped or hurt her. Lake is really charismatic and obviously really good at performing in front of a camera, while her opponent is a flawed candidate in her own right. So if you ask me, Lake would probably win this by a larger margin without the election denier stuff if she ran as a "generic but charismatic Republican".

Also note that pro- or anti-Trump has become one of the most salient dividing lines among Republican candidates. At this point, after 7.5 years of GOP politics being dominated by Trump, being aligned with Trump's populist policy agenda is automatically implied when a candidate explicitly positions him- or herself as pro-Trump. Also, afaik, the one policy issue other than "election integrity" that Lake has doubled down on is trump-style hawkishness on immigration, which is obviously an issue that energizes the AZ GOP base, but is out of step with the interests of the donor class.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 9 2022 05:46pm

yes but it wont happen. the right and left need him to hang around as long as possible. they have nothing else otherwise

if he did the sensible thing and became a quiet kingmaker no one would know what to do with themselves

Remove the trump base of the GOP, and they would have swept this election

You discuss this as if I'm trying to find the optimal solution for GOP success, lol. The point is that Trumpist candidates focus on mostly nonsense that appeals to Trump cult voters instead of real issues that appeal to general election voters.

It's a personality cult. Trump will prevail, because Republicans are chicken-shit.

At least this much we can agree on: these midterms have made it clear once and for all that if the GOP is stupid enough to pick Trump as its standard bearer once again instead of going with the obvious alternative of DeSantis, then they will lose 2024 badly, and deservedly so.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 9 2022 05:49pm

You've provided no reason to support the New Guy over the Old Guy based on your previous logic.

600k+ votes for an OPEN anti-White racist scum

if a Dem voter is not a low-info idiot, its a ultra safe bet he/she's a malicious ethno-nazi who votes with skin color / views "wypipo" as the enemy



BREAKING: U.S. Senate Candidate Krystle Matthews [D-SC]: "Treat them [white people] like sh*t”

I can see that as a major factor. What do you think about the NY house?

DeSantis offers largely the same policies as Trump, has the same fighting spirit and willingness to push back against the MSM and endure bad press - but he is far more competent, doesn't shoot himself in the foot all the time and is not nearly as radioactive in the suburbs or with swing voters as Trump. Also, he doesn't have a long backlog of scandals and costing his own party seats. And unlike Trump (and Biden), he's not fucking ancient and would signal a generational change in political leadership. What Trump has over him is charisma and entertainer qualities, he probably also has a bit more "magic appeal" to working-class whites than DeSantis.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 9 2022 06:22pm

DeSantis also doesn't post outrageous $h*t on twitter which turns many independent/swing voters away.