Too Early to Celebrate

Hard-core conservatives are in a mood to party. Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican, announced he will not seek reelection next year. Flake is very much a traditional conservative but that’s not good enough for the Right. They have continually attacked him even though they need his vote to pass the Trump agenda.

It looks like the GOP will nominate Kelli Ward, a former state senator. She opposed John McCain in 2016 and declared his and Hillary Clinton’s positions to be nearly the same. When he developed brain cancer, she urged him to resign and offered herself up as a replacement. Sounds like she took lessons in class from Donald Trump. Her likely opponent is Kyrsten Sinema, a three term member of Congress. She is a moderate who has even won the support of the Chamber of Commerce. I would say that Republicans stand a good chance of losing a seat.

This is the continuation of a pattern. The Right went after Luther Strange, the Alabama senator chosen to replace Jeff Sessions. Even though Strange is a solid conservative, he lost in the primary to Roy Moore. As Alabama Chief Justice, he used state funds to build a monument promoting his religion and defied a federal court order to remove it. He may win, but his Democratic challenger is making a race out of it.

In 2012 they gleefully defeated Richard Lugar. Their candidate declared that Social Security is unconstitutional and it is God’s will that a pregnant rape victim bear the child. They lost a seat they held for thirty-six years.
I don’t understand their thinking. They don’t seem to care about getting their agenda passed or even staying in power. Their full focus is on destroying the so-called Establishment. To borrow a term used for those with a blind hatred for President Trump, they seem to suffering from Establishment Derangement Syndrome.
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Each party is moving further to the extreme and showing political ineptness. I think there is a reasonable chance of a new party forming in the next twenty years and one of the existing parties becoming a fringe group third party.
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