(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day: Katie Arrington- 2023 Update [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2023-01-13
On this date in 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Katie Arrington, a failed candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District in the 2018 elections, after serving a single term in the South Carolina House of Representatives. Arrington was decidedly a candidate to watch, since from the point she announced she was running for Congress, she made it clear she was doing so to “support Donald Trump’s bold, conservative agenda”, which was evident in her lack of understanding about border security and desire to build a wall along the U.S./Mexico border.
The incumbent Republican that Arrington was challenging was FRED Alumni Mark Sanford, who may have several bizarre incidents that we’ve documented against him, but still was willing to criticize Donald Trump for some of his s***tier moments in the spotlight. Trump endorsed Arrington over Sanford, and why he thought it would help her cause by calling out Sanford for “hiking the Tallahassee Trail”, which isn’t an actual thing, nor is it the correct reference to the extramarital affair that Sanford had back in 2009. But with a traditionally conservative district filled with Republicans who had grown tired of Sanford after years and were starting to buy into Arrington and Trump’s white nationalist rhetoric… Arrington managed to win the GOP Primary, and Trump was crowing about f***ing over Mark Sanford on Twitter.
Arrington practically declared herself a member of Congress, promising that “There’s no Blue Wave crashing on the shores of South Carolina”. Only a few days after that, it wasn’t a Blue Wave that crashed into Katie Arrington (yet), it was an apparent drunk driver who veered into her own lane, and crashed into her head on. At her debate in October against Joe Cunningham, Arrington tried attacking him for not denouncing “memes” about her that said she “faked her breast cancer” or others that were overtly racist and depicted African Americans who supported her “being lynched”. These “memes” were either created online by conservatives who supported Mark Sanford in the primary and had barely been viewed on the internet, at all, let alone been viewed by Cunningham. But sixteen minutes into the debate, it was Arrington’s own campaign that used her Twitter account to complain about them for the first time. Cunningham denounced the images immediately after learning they existed when Arrington mentioned it for the first time, much like the rest of the public. So… Arrington made a botched attempt at creating a non-scandal.
In the final weeks of the campaign in October, there were signs that Katie Arrington maybe didn’t have as comfortable of a lead as she was projecting in June, after she made veiled threats towards the mayor of the Isle of Palms, Jimmy Carroll, telling him he “lost his seat at the table” for endorsing Cunningham, and a real sign of trouble was that the NRCC had to dump almost a quarter of a million dollars into the race to aid her at the last minute in what was supposed to be a “safe” Republican district. Mark Sanford refused to endorse her, at all, and outright talked about her willingness to brazenly lie just a week before the election. And so it was that as Donald Trump’s fortunes turned worse and worse, and Katie Arrington’s campaign techniques got more and more stupid, that Joe Cunningham upset her with the out-of-the-box strategy of seeming rather sane and moderate.
Arrington took the loss well in her concession sp- HA! Gotcha. Arrington flipped out during her concession speech and went on a tirade against Mark Sanford, while promising she’d be back to run for the seat again in 2020, a promise that she broke. She DID return in 2022, though, again serving as Donald Trump’s revenge proxy to try to primary Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who had the NERVE to be upset that Donald Trump staged a failed coup upon her workplace. Which, Arrington supported Donald Trump’s Big Lie about a stolen election and never stopped, saying as much as late as February of 2022. So we know which horse Trump was backing in this primary.
Somehow, don’t ask us how… Katie Arrington got a job at the Pentagon during the Biden administration, in spite of admitting during her interview she had no experience in cybersecurity, which was the department she was applying for a job in. Alas, she ran afoul of supervisors for allegedly improperly disclosing classified information (she probably learned it from Trump). That became a part of Mace’s campaign against Arrington, who projected herself as a victim, and claimed the Pentagon was firing Republicans on their staff punitively for being Republicans, without much proof.
Donald Trump emerged from his stolen-document hut at Mar-a-Lago to appear at a rally with Arrington in March of 2022 where Arrington promised that if elected, her four priorities were:
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/13/2147016/-Fanatical-Republican-Extremist-of-the-Day-Katie-Arrington-2023-Update
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
