Next Populist Moment

On Tuesday Blake Masters, a rising star of New Right won Arizona’s Republican Senate Primary by more than 10 points. Kari Lake beat Karrin Taylor Robertson, the establishment candidate in Arizona’s gubernatorial primaries. In Michigan, John Gibbs (a Stanford and Harvard graduate and faithful Catholic convert who was assistant secretary to HUD) defeated Peter Meijer, anti-Trump incumbent by just 3.6 points.

The only question left in the field is Joe Kent. Kent is a retired Green Beret who was also a Gold Star husband and is running for Washington State’s third district of the U.S. House of Representatives. Kent hopes to defeat Jaime Herrera Beutler (a liberal Republican incumbent who, like Meijer, voted for President Trump’s impeachment).

On Wednesday morning, with 57 percent reporting and Kent trailing Beutler by a good distance, many were ready to call the race against the America First challenger. It seems that their judgement was not premature as the numbers start to trickle in. While counting is still inexplicably unfinished, at the time of writing Kent has closed the gap to just 1.3 points, with only 83 percent of all votes reported. Kent has a path to victory that is clearer each time he counts the votes.

If he does lose, it will be no mystery why: Heidi St. John. The Christian mommy-blogger-cum-entrepreneur was meant to bow out if she did not receive the 45th president’s endorsement. St. John stayed put when Kent got the nod. At present, she is trailing at 15.7 percent to Kent’s 22. If the America First vote had not been split, it would be clear ahead of Beutler’s 23.3 percent.

Halfway in Kansas, an abortion referendum was defeated to great fanfare. Pro-abortion Democrats and accommodationist Republicans have taken the result as evidence that pro-life policy will not actually be viable at the state level after Roe. Rachel Sweet, campaign manager of the pro-abortion group Kansas for Constitutional Freedom, claimed that “the people of Kansas have spoken. The majority believe that abortion should always be legal, safe and available in Kansas. President Joe Biden stated that the “people of Kansas have spoken”.

Of course, this vote doesn’t do anything of the kind. The ballot amendment reads:

Because Kansans value both women and children, the constitution of the state of Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion. The constitution allows the citizens to pass abortion laws through the state senators and representatives.

Maybe a voter is smarter than me; I sure hope so. However, if I had to leave work on Tuesday morning to vote in the primary election quickly, it wouldn’t be possible to understand that word salad. At a glance (which is all most people give), a reasonable person could easily take a “No” vote to mean not empowering legislators to enshrine a fictional right to abortion at the state level. This fact, combined with the state’s notorious libertarian streak makes it hard to believe that Kansas failed its Kansas bill. This is not a condemnation of American prospects to ban abortion.

Tuesday night was an extraordinary one for GOP’s rising wing. Call it pro-Trump or MAGA. Ben Domenech, a prominent D.C. libertarian, strangely and preemptively cast the night as “not a particularly good showing for populists.” But it was, on almost any measure, an absolutely stellar showing.

Masters should be a source of hope for the new generation. He opposes abortion wholesale, and thinks Griswold and Obergefell should go the way of Roe. He has read Curtis Yarvin, Ted Kaczynski. He would like to reduce immigration and control Big Tech. His thoughts turn to the Capitol riot and the previous election. He is the father to three children and ran on America First, but also on a pro-family platform.

Subscribe Today

Get weekly emails in your inbox

Conventional wisdom believed he would not be elected after Tuesday afternoon. He outperformed J.D. Vance won Ohio by 8.3 points. This cycle has shown beyond any doubt that the possible in politics is lightyears beyond the establishment’s measure of it.

No surprise, then, that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is bothered by this latest round of victors. McConnell, once bullish about the party’s prospects in midterm elections, was now worried on Fox News that this election could prove to be an utter disaster. He seems to believe that a Republican Party that has a higher message than praising Joe Biden won’t be able to win a majority. And if they did, he would surely have no interest in allowing them to govern.

McConnell has a right to worry in this case. It is not that the new Republican crop will lose but they–we are going to win.