How many times will Republicans nominate losers before learning their lesson?

How many times can Republicans run head-first into a wall before realizing that candidates matter in elections? Kari Lake is here to test that theory.

Former TV news anchor Kari Lake won the GOP Senate primary in Arizona on Tuesday, meaning that she will be the nominee against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) in a race that is crucial to GOP control of the chamber. That is terrible news for the GOP, given Lake’s embarrassing loss in 2022 in the Arizona governor’s race to a weak Democratic opponent and the subsequent political toxication of her image by her baseless claims that the election was stolen from her.

As of now, Lake is down 3.4 points to Gallego in the RealClearPolitics polling average. In fact, Lake has not led a single poll included in RealClearPolitic's dataset going back to January, trailing in 18 of the 19 polls and recording a tie as her best performance. This is still the case even as former President Donald Trump has led President Joe Biden, and now Vice President Kamala Harris, in the presidential race in the state.

Lake is a loser retread, and she is well on her way to losing again because voters don’t like candidates who lose and then throw a tantrum about it (as former Democratic Rep. Stacey Abrams found out in Georgia). Lake is also not the only retread that lost a winnable race in 2022 and is now back on the scene because GOP voters and leaders are content to lose if it means losing with candidates who “fight.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

This brings us to the problem looming over the presidential race. Harris is undeniably a weak candidate who is terrible at politics. Despite that, it is a real possibility that Trump might lose to her, given his own political toxicity, his age, and the fact that voters already tossed him out of office in 2020. The latest red flag is Trump's choice of a relatively weak running mate who does not cover Trump’s own liabilities and is already polling poorly, while Harris may just choose a popular governor from swing state Pennsylvania to mask her own electoral liabilities.

If Lake loses, as she is likely to do, it will be yet another winnable race with major consequences that the GOP gave away. The same will be true if Trump loses, ushering in four years of Harris and her destructive ideology, all because GOP arrogance and misguided ideas of “loyalty” pushed the party into embracing a weak candidate who had already outlived his political usefulness.