Palin's loss shows that the GOP may shed the MAGA insanity and rediscover semi-rationality - or not
In the first round on June 11th, Sarah Palin, MAGA darling and Trump acolyte led the field with 27% of the vote. Traditional Republican Nicholas Begich was second with 19.1%. Independent Al Gross was third with 12.6%. And rounding out the field of four moving on was eventual winner Mary Peltola.
Among the 44 other candidates who failed to hurdle the first obstacle were 14 other Republicans, who collectively received 11% of the vote — meaning that the GOP candidates received over 57% of the vote. It would therefore have been reasonable to assume that the eventual winner would be a Republican.
Al Gross dropped out before the first round of the playoffs. This left the second-place choices of the failed candidates divided up among Palin, Begich, and Peltola.
Peltola went from fourth to first. Palin from first to second. And Begich was eliminated. His second-place votes were then divvied up between Palin and Peltola. As Begich is a Republican most pundits would assume his second place votes would be largely cast for another Republican — in this case, Palin. And as between the two of them, they had 60% of the vote it would have been reasonable to assume that Palin would win.
But that was not the case. Palin only picked up a bare majority (27,042) of the 53,756 votes. Of the rest, 11,222 voters had not voted for either finalist. While 15,445 voters, who had the Republican Begich as their first choice, chose the Democrat Peltola over Palin.
I will grant you that this one state election may not represent a national trend. And Sarah Palin had historically low approval ratings as she had abandoned Alaska to pursue a frustrated dream of national significance. But Trump and his MAGA mob must have noticed that almost 50% of Begich’s voters preferred nobody or a Democrat over Trump’s anointed sycophant.
Another insight into Palin sheds some light on her self-regard. During the campaign, Begich had told people who were going to vote for him to put Palin as their second choice. Palin did not return the favor — even though it would have cost her nothing and would have promoted the GOP’s interests. But she is a MAGA who cannot see anything beyond her mirror.
In his return to the campaign trail after his double bout of COVID, Joe Biden told a group of donors in a private meeting,
“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,”
The 2022 midterms may show which one of those two possibilities is correct. If it is the death knell, Republicans will return to their politics of wealth redistribution, corporatism, and social puritanism — without the oratorical excesses. If it is the beginning, “semi-fascism” will be replaced with full-blown fascism. And America’s experiment in representative democracy risks having its heart ripped out on the altar of despotism.