Arizona Senate race turns

In all the excitement attending the Twitter War – and the revelation that Facebook and Twitter have indeed been State actors – one Senate race almost escaped everyone’s notice. That race is the Arizona Senate race, where Mark Kelly (D) is trying to hold his seat. As long as a certain libertarian independent stayed in the race, Kelly might have held off Republican Blake Masters’ challenge. But last week Marc Victor dropped out of the race and endorsed Masters. Now Masters has momentum to win – and if he does win, he should join or instigate a movement to remove the one Senator who should have had his back, but did him no favors: Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Minority Floor Leader.

How the Arizona Senate race turned

The newsletter Great American Daily gives the story. The Real Clear Politics polling averages for the Arizona Senate race showed Mark Kelly ahead by 6.2 percent on September 27. On Friday that lead had narrowed to one percent. Creative Destruction Media reports that the latest Big Data poll shows Blake Masters leading by 1.2 percent. Furthermore, RCP calculates that its source polls underestimate Masters’ strength by 0.6 percent. Which means that Kelly leads by only 0.4 percent, two days away from the election. RCP actually expects Blake Masters to win the race and pick up that Senate seat.

What happened? How did Kelly blow such a commanding lead? It’s not as if Masters had any help. In fact, Great American Daily charges that Mitch McConnell hung Masters out to dry.

RINO Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pulled all of the Senate Leadership Fund Super PAC’s TV ads from Arizona – over $10 million – because McConnell wanted Masters to lose.

McConnell hoped a Masters loss would send a message that nominating Trump-supporting conservatives like Blake Masters would throw away winnable races.

In 2024, McConnell planned to hold Masters out as a cautionary tale and warn Republicans to line up behind Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney-type RINOs.

That was before Masters and Kelly met in a debate. Fox News reported that immigration and abortion dominated the debate. But Masters soundly thrashed Kelly for voting lock-step with Biden – which his colleague Kyrsten Sinema would not.

The spoiler drops out

But the race had a spoiler in it: Marc Victor, leader of the Live and Let Live Global Peace Movement. Marc Victor clearly sets forth his guiding Principle for political action. It has its basis in the broader Non-aggression Principle, which basically says: don’t strike first.

Victor announced that he would be open to talk to either candidate in the Arizona Senate race willing to talk to him. Blake Masters was willing to talk; Mark Kelly was not. This interview between Victor and Masters was the result.

Because Masters “hit” on nearly every issue Marc Victor was pressing, Victor decided not to play the spoiler any longer. So he dropped out of the Arizona Senate race and endorsed Blake Masters.

That endorsement, according to Great American Daily, Americans Report, and Dick Morris, told the tale. Todd Starnes said the Arizona Senate race “was not one Republicans were depending on winning.” That supports Great American Daily’s allegation that Mitch McConnell deliberately let the race go – or so he thought. Dick Morris, on the other hand, called on Republicans to remember to “MOW the Democrats.” That meant supporting Black Masters, Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, and Herschel Walker in Georgia. RCP projects that Oz will hold the Pennsylvania Senate seat, and Walker will get into a December 6 runoff.

But with Victor’s announcement, Fox News and Cook Political Report immediately called the race a toss-up.

Lessons from history

The Arizona Senate race teaches us that a new ethic is rapidly taking over the Republican Party. Seventy-five years ago, the Cold War began. The Republicans changed their foreign-policy outlook rapidly after the Second World War. Isolationists like Robert Taft gave place to unabashed war hawks like Richard M. Nixon. The sympathy that most Democrats had with Communists did not help the anti-war case. Indeed, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson were two of the biggest hawks of that era. That went double after Nikita S. Khrushchev, the Great Empire Builder, placed missiles in Cuba.

Nixon resigned in disgrace, and his successor Gerald R. Ford led American forces in disorderly retreat from Vietnam. Democrat James Earl Carter, Jr. won election – though by the skin of his teeth. Your editor attended college during those years, and watched most of his fellow students openly support Communist movements worldwide and press for unilateral disarmament at home. Carter actually disappointed them by not disarming as they and others like them demanded. Thus the Democrats fell to infighting, with the “DrafTed” movement to promote Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Ronald Reagan won the Election of 1980, after famously asking, “Are you better off?” (Answer: No.) Then for the next eight years he, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the UK, and Pope John Paul II pressured the old Soviet Union insurmountably with an arms race and willingness to fight against Soviet surrogates. The Soviet Union collapsed, and Communist empire building collapsed with it.

Relevancy to the Arizona Senate race

How is this relevant? Simple: Mitch McConnell is a product of that era. He came to the Senate with Reagan’s re-election and has stayed in the Senate ever since. His politics are those of the Republican Establishment that formed in the wake of Reagan’s achievement. That Establishment got George W. Bush elected in 2000, and pressed for revenge against the entire Arab world for the Attacks of September 11, 2001. Bush’s Vice-President, Richard Cheney, is also part of that Establishment, as is his daughter Liz. In fact, Liz Cheney, after losing her House primary, is now endorsing Democrats. She endorsed Katie Hodges against Kari Lake in the Arizona governor’s race, and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia’s Seventh House District.

Marc Victor could probably explain Liz Cheney’s attitude. Her father was heavily invested in Halliburton, which made a fortune in “nation building” contracts after the Iraq War. She retains that “Halliburton Mind-set.”

In sharp contrast, Donald J. Trump won election in 2016 on an anti-war platform, the first Republican to do so. More than any single person, Donald Trump made anti-war respectable among the broad category of lovers of liberty. A man like Marc Victor would notice. Blake Masters was smart enough to heed his call.

Which leads us to repeat what we said before the Wyoming Republican At-large House Primary. RINOs, take heed: your normal isn’t coming back. Not when Republicans can induce libertarians to stop playing spoiler politics.