Westneat: State GOP stuck on Trump

So what is the party doing? Embracing Donald Trump, maybe more than ever.

The state party has announced the lineup for the biggest gathering of Republicans this year, a Tri-Cities event in May called the “2023 Republican Action Conference.” It’s an off-year rally and planning session for the huge 2024 election cycle.

The keynote speaker? It’s Trump’s top spokesperson, Liz Harrington.

Harrington is a full-on election denier and conspiracy theorist. She has repeatedly stated, falsely, that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud, that it was stolen from Trump and that he really somehow won in a landslide. At a QAnon-affiliated conference last year, she called for arresting the unnamed officials who supposedly stole the election, who she also has maligned as “communists.”

Washington state GOP Chair Caleb Heimlich enthused in a video announcing Harrington’s appearance: “She’s going to talk big picture about the battle to save our country.”

Save it from the communists? Also scheduled to speak: failed congressional candidate Joe Kent, who said recently, “Trump is the leader for this era.”

Why, Republicans? Why are you doing this to yourselves?

In three decades covering local politics I’ve never seen a group just keep punching itself in the face, over and over, knowing that it’s bloodying any chances it has in the next election.

Since Trump came down the escalator, with MAGA know-nothingism in tow, the GOP in Washington has lost half its congressional seats, the secretary of state’s office, five state Senate seats along with control of that body, as well as eight state House seats.

Their own elected leaders and polling experts are painfully aware the Trump era has been a disaster. Yet the party eagerly is signing up for more.

When Trump was indicted on multiple felony counts, the state party put out a statement backing him. One of its statewide committee members, Georgene Faries of Snohomish County, called for people to come together in group prayers for Trump — as if he’d been diagnosed with an illness, not charged with covering up hush money payments to a porn star.

Said the Yakima County Republicans, one of many local GOP groups to issue statements: “We stand with Trump.”

We know you do. That’s the problem — voters here know it, too. Last fall local Republicans fielded some of their most moderate and accomplished candidates in years in the down-ballot races. They lost anyway because voters see that the GOP has become less a party of principles than a cult of personality. A deranged personality.

Now the party seems to be preemptively committing Trumpicide for another cycle — 19 months ahead of the actual voting.

Why, Republicans? I know you’ve got that base to worry about. But to get out of this doom cycle, at some point you’re going to have to lead.

Take it from no less of a GOP whisperer than Ann Coulter: “(Trump’s) already lost three election cycles for the GOP — why not make it four?” she taunted her own party this past week. “New GOP motto: Unable to learn from the third kick of a mule.”

In our state, all of this adds up to political malpractice. I wrote in December how a silver lining for the Washington GOP is that displeased voters had done much of their dirty work for them, cleansing the party of most all the election deniers and conspiracy theorists. It meant there was a golden chance to try to regroup and recast, finally, as something more palatable.

Chance squandered. Get ready for the fourth kick of the mule.