To say merely that President Joe Biden had a bad week is to commit the journalistic sin of understatement. The president has not yet reached the depths to which Jimmy Carter plunged but the proverbial fat lady has reportedly been seen entering the building. It is no longer enough that he's not Donald J. Trump. The ongoing Afghanistan debacle, the return of inflation and the failure of the economy to create jobs at the pace economists suggest it should have not helped him. In the RealClearPolitics average for Aug. 27, Biden's job approval numbers were upside down. If that continues, political analysts of all stripes are saying already, it's highly likely the GOP will take control of both the House and Senate after the next election.
Republicans, however, should be cautious in their optimism. They still have problems of their own to sort out—the biggest of which is how to separate sound policies implemented by the last administration from the cult of personality surrounding the once and potentially future president of the United States. Yet all over the country, GOP candidates of every background and ideological stripe are copying Trump's style in the hopes of winning his endorsement and the nomination.
Whether that works remains to be seen. In a recent GOP Ohio special election primary, the winning candidate finished first out of a field of 11 with 37 percent of the vote and Trump's endorsement. In a Texas all-GOP congressional runoff election held at just about the same time, the candidate the former president backed (who was also the widow of the congressman whose death created the vacancy being filled) lost, 53-47.
What was important in these races, indeed is important in all races, is that the winning candidate appeared authentic. They must show their true selves to the voters when asking for their support. Those who wrap themselves in artifice to win votes often come up short—as George H.W. Bush did in 1992. He's broken his signature, Reaganesque promise to rebuff the Democrats' continual demand for higher taxes, so the voters sent him home to Houston.
In many places, GOP strategists and party mandarins find themselves in the unenviable position of having to root out the candidates who are merely mimicking the former president's style and positions to win votes to earn an endorsement, seize a nomination and then maybe collapse during the general election once their duplicity is exposed.
Something very much like that is happening now in Arizona, where former local Fox News anchor Kari Lake is seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination on a full-blown, all-MAGA platform. After two decades on local TV, she's the celebrity candidate—and she's using that for all it's worth. Her riffs on the hot topics of the day from COVID-19 to China to Critical Race Theory are Trump-like and are received with approval by his most devoted followers. On paper, she looks like the candidate to watch, the one who Trump might anoint as his choice to occupy the governor's mansion after the next election. Except it's not certain she's authentic and that everything she is saying now differs substantially from things she's said in the past, on the air.
A quick search on the internet reveals her contributions to the John Kerry and Barack Obama presidential campaigns, her four-year long switch to "Democrat" by registration and interviews with Obama in the spring of 2016 best described as fawning. That's cause for concern, according to a longtime Arizona GOP operative.
"On TV she was 'Fake News.' Now she's 'Fake Lake,'" he told me candidly. He worries her baggage—that she practically begged Biden to run in 2016, that she for a time backed the presidential aspirations of former Ohio governor and avowed "Never Trumper" John Kasich and that she announced on-air she thought Hillary Clinton won the first debate—could make her unelectable in the general even if she wins the nomination.
"Worst of all," he told me, "She denied supporting Trump during the election yet she's now running as his mini-me."
Lake used to be a newsreader. Now she's an ambitious politician. If she's also not an authentic one, and we can't be sure she is, she's going to give GOP leaders plenty of sleepless nights between now and the primary. Just like other dozens of candidates who think the path to victory only runs through Mar-A-Lago.
Newsweek contributing editor Peter Roff has written extensively about politics and the American experience for U.S. News and World Report, United Press International and other publications.
He can be reached by email at RoffColumns@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @PeterRoff.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
