The Grand Canyon State’s Republican Primary for the seat of retiring Jeff Flake is in high gear, with the frontrunner, Rep. Martha McSally, running by some accounts neck-and-neck with “Chemtrails” conspiracy theorist Kelli Ward, a former State Senator, and former disgraced Sheriff Joe Arpaio far behind. McSally is one of those Members of Congress who’s been described as “reasonable, for a Republican.” But, as we know, that is not generally what Republican Primary voters want. McSally is considered a “moderate” in same sense Lindsey Graham and Roy Blunt are: they still vote right-wing, but they’re not orifices about it.
So, McSally’s desperate to stop Ward, what does she do? Go and attack the probable Democratic Nominee, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema for her patriotism — and her, ummm, well, “style,” maybe? McSally’s commercial castigates Sinema for protesting the Iraq War “in a pink tutu” in 2003 or so. McSally contrasts Sinema’s “attacking our military,” though she never explains how attacking a particular war policy is to attack the troops, with her own military service.
Now, back before Bill Clinton admitted to dodging the draft because he “loathed the military” — his actual words, a poor choice, certainly, but it certainly said nothing about his feelings about the troops -- certainly any notion a Democrat or liberal candidate was in some sense anti-military had a certain gravitas. And while not the site of many major military installations — Fort Huachuca, Yuma Proving Ground, and a couple of Air Force facilities — Arizona has a significant number of veterans.
It’s probably likely McSally’s people had had the commercial waiting for some time. It’s a common theme to rouse the base in military-heavy and veteran-heavy precincts. But it certainly says more about McSally than it does about Sinema. And I doubt it will help her any against Ward.
Let us pause for a moment to contemplate Sinema’s choice of attire at one event approximately fifteen years ago. I suspect as an organizer of various left- causes at the time, Sinema was simply being theatrical, or it was for part of a skit. Whatever. Who cares? And actually, it looks to me like the tutu was purple, not pink.
Now, why — why in God’s green earth — is this “Wait, what?” kind of attack being deployed now?
Male candidates tend to have a tendency to try to out-macho one another at times. But a female versus female race? McSally, fighter pilot, certainly has d- swinging bona fides. And it gets interesting when one notes Sinema, the only out bisexual in Congress presently, was a protege of former Arizona Governor and HHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. Sinema once described herself as a “Prada Socialist.” She was going to be attacked for all that anyway.
But why now? Is McSally so desperate — do the internal polls say Ward is trending — that she needs to motivate five elderly lesbian veterans in a bar in Tuscon who just got through lambasting femmes or bis amongst themselves, to get out and vote in the primary for a fellow veteran? Because that’s certainly what it looks like.
The GOP establishment is backing McSally to the hilt. They soooo don’t want Ward as their nominee because Sinema would make mincemeat of her — actually she polls ahead of all three GOP possibilities. McSally’s their only viable nominee. She’s moderate enough she can pretend to be even more moderate and if factors work the way they want, she’s the only one of the three seeking the GOP nod that has a chance.
But among GOP base voters, those are net negatives. So the patriotism and the macho cards have been played. By playing them this early they have shown their desperation and panic.
In deploying commercial’s, timing’s precious. By deploying this one now, McSally’s ruined it. If they were neck and neck in October, that would have been the time to do it.
I want to go out on a limb and predict Ward beats McSally in the primary, but that’d be just too lucky. We shall see.