So Close Yet Shofar
What the MAGA coping in Maricopa means for the future of the movement.
Republicans are deep into the recriminations phase of their post-midterms reckoning. Pundits are gnashing their teeth, GOP congressional leaders are watching their backs, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are squabbling as they position themselves for 2024, and theyāre all trying to place the blame for the defeat of the candidates Trump endorsed and failure of the expected red wave to materialize.
What do the midterm results mean for the future of MAGA? Itās still too early to say. The movement took a beating at the ballot box last weekābut of course electoral defeats have long been a hallmark of MAGA. Itās worth keeping a close eye on the reaction of the diehard MAGA candidates and supporters, because how they cope with the 2022 election results may be a harbinger of whatās to come.
Unfortunately, the MAGA reaction so far feels eerily familiar. In the MAGA hotbed of Maricopa County, Arizona, for example, there are echoes of January 6th. Weāre not seeing a mob storming the vote-counting centers, but thatās because the police presence is heavy there and the consequences are clear. Yet the MAGA movement is still out in force.
To begin with, even as the vote count continues, Republican officials from former President Trump downwards have been claiming electoral fraud. Trump took aim at Arizona (as well as Nevada and other jurisdictions), calling out, āDo Election over again!ā on his social media platform. Blake Masters said he would not concede the election, despite the press having determined that he lost his Senate race to Democrat Mark Kelly, until āevery legal vote is counted.ā GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake has repeatedly railed against the electoral process, saying on Tucker Carlsonās show on Friday,
Weāve had such terrible elections. Theyāre run poorly. Theyāre ripe [sic] with fraud. . . . Our elected officials tell us if we dare bring it up weāre conspiracy theorists, weāre election deniers. Darn it, weāve got to start bringing this up.
If this all sounds familiar, it shouldāthis is a standard part of the MAGA playbook: If we do not win, the election is fraudulent, except for the parts of it we won. This was the essence of Donald Trumpās Big Lie about the 2020 election, which directly led to January 6th; similar beliefs remain widespread in the GOP. The so-called āKari Lake War Room,ā a Twitter account that claims to be the official campaign Twitter account for Lake and has 115,000 followers, tweeted out on Friday:
Again, itās a call to ignore the full results of the election and to claim that everything that happened outside of same-day vote counting is fraud.
Meanwhile, outside the vote-counting centers, protesters have been gathering, calling the electoral counters and the sheriffās deputies guarding them traitors. This is not separate from the election itself. Mark Finchem, the GOP candidate for secretary of state, who is QAnon affiliated, a Big Lie proponent, an Oath Keeper, and a January 6th participant, called in mid-October for people to watch ballot dropboxesāwhich immediately resulted in armed groups showing up to watch dropboxes, including an Oath Keepers-affiliated group and a QAnon-affiliated one. All this has continued into the post-election period. The groups protesting donāt have clear affiliations but there have been calls for more of them to show up, including from Wendy Rogers, the far-right state senator:
In response to Rogersās call, a small group of protesters showed up. Viceās Tess Owens took photos of the rally, which included at least one visible Boogaloo Boi and a member of the Texas-based American Reformation Front, which Talia Jane so aptly described as a christofascist off-brand Patriot Front. Maybe a hundred people gathered there over the weekend, because, as Tess Owen pointed out, the count is ongoing and Kari Lakeās supporters do not believe sheās lost.
But the gathering turned into something much more interesting, and much more clearly reminiscent of January 6th: The rally Wendy Rogers called for engaged in a āJericho March.ā You may remember the organization named Jericho March and its role in laying the groundwork for the January 6th insurrection. As God instructed the Israelites to walk seven times around Jericho and blow the shofar (horn) so that the walls would fall and everyone within the city would be slaughtered in Godās name, so believers have taken up the mantle of spiritual warfare and continued Jericho Marches in Maricopa County. The target that they are currently circling, which holds their enemies, is the center in which votes are being counted.
None of this should be surprisingāconsidering that the Arizona GOPās candidates, including Lake and Masters, were among the most extremeāeven out of the already extreme batch of Republican candidates in this cycle. And who could forget the time the Arizona GOP asked its followers if theyād be willing to die to get the 2020 election overturned by Trump? While parts of the GOP have used their midterm-defeat to take a break from election denial and have mostly accepted the results, Masters and Lake remain all in.
A major reason MAGA is unlikely to just dissipate with electoral loss is that for many true believers it is linked to beliefsāreligious and/or conspiratorialāthat run far deeper than politics.
Some GOP figures had longstanding ties to charismatic and prophetic movements, although their influence was considered marginal. (Rick Perry, for example.) Donald Trump changed this, author Sarah Posner tells the Washington Post: āHe made all of these B-listers and C-listers, he turned them into celebrities, hosting events at the White House where theyād sing songs and speak in tongues. These changes in the charismatic world are becoming mainstreamed in evangelicalism.ā In the leadup to the midterms, Lance Wallnau, a self-declared prophet and one of the most prominent faces of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), campaigned for Republicans all over the country. Kari Lake has appeared on stage with Christian singer Sean Feucht, a diehard dominionist and associate of Wallnauās. She has cozied up to militia members and once tweeted a clear threat to any counterprotesters to one of Feuchtās concerts: āIf you mess with them or our 1st amendment right to worship Godāyouāll meet Jesus one way or another.ā
Again, it is very unlikely that Kari Lakeās supporters will try to storm the Maricopa ballot center. But their ideology isnāt far from the one that drove people to march around the Capitol in the weeks before January 6th and then to attack it: the belief that not just humans but institutions can be possessed by evil spirits, by demons and powers of darkness (Eph. 6:12)āand that they have to be cleansed, purged, defeated by righteous Christians in the cosmic battle between good and evil. It is ultimately a totalizingātotalitarian, evenābelief system that allows for no nuance, that only knows friend or mortal foe. And, crucially, while this kind of belief can wane for any number of reasons, it has never been swayed by defeat at the ballot box. Rather, it takes defeats and twists them into stories of heroic martyrdom, of promises of revenge and retribution.
The 2022 midterms may have a real impact on funding for candidates like these, or on punditsā reactions or endorsements. That would be great. But the MAGA ideologyāthe Big Lie, some form of Christian nationalism, a disdain for democracy, a belief that āpatriotsā can and should intervene in elections when they donāt go their wayāhasnāt, and wonāt, disappear so easily.
