By DEXTER DUGGAN
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Some marathoners on the road to the 2018 elections passed through this Phoenix suburb in mid-October, testing whether their compass is true.
Is former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon taking the right steps by urging war on the political establishment, or pointing Republicans a wrong way that splits the GOP, enabling Democratic victories?
Bannon was joined by strong Donald Trump backer and national radio host Laura Ingraham at an October 17 rally here for Kelli Ward, a physician and former Arizona state senator looking to defeat unpopular Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, whose name repeatedly was booed by audience members filling a hotel ballroom on North Scottsdale Road.
Challenging a system viewed as uncaring and inbred, Bannon renews a theme that proved victorious for the leader he so admires, Trump.
Against all odds, Trump won the presidency by rejecting an elite that weakened the United States but rewarded the powerful. Even though the Manhattan multibillionaire seemed to fit that same privileged profile himself, he made a point of connecting with often-forgotten voters longing for a champion.
Insisting that Trump was divisive and offensive, powerful Republicans including key members of the GOP’s national leadership rejected or mocked him or swore not to vote for him.
However, their clout was insufficient against an aggrieved middle class who saw their values and futures vanishing due to the failed theories of mistakenly self-assured Beltway consultants who reached out instead to the politically correct.
In an opinion piece at the unlikely venue of liberal CNN, commentator Mark Bauerlein posted on October 16 under the headline, “GOP doesn’t have a clue — but Bannon does.”
“One has to wonder at the cluelessness of leaders who didn’t realize that this outreach to ‘other’ identities would impress the base as just more identity politics with a benign sheen,” Bauerlein said.
“Social and religious conservatives, along with American workers who’ve been damaged by open borders and free trade, know well that ‘inclusivity’ has been a hammer used against them. . . .
“Bannon dignifies the people whom liberalism deplores,” Bauerlein said. “Mitt Romney didn’t. Bannon elevates them to the status of troops in a war within. ‘Y’all didn’t start it,’ he opened. ‘The establishment started it’.”
The mid-October Scottsdale event originally was to be a stop on Ingraham’s tour to promote her new pro-Trump book, Billionaire at the Barricades: The Populist Revolution From Reagan to Trump (St. Martin’s Press), which will be reviewed later in The Wanderer.
However, Ingraham’s aim expanded to include a rally for Senate hopeful Ward, whom she already had endorsed to replace Arizonan Flake, an open-borders globalist and strong foe of Trump.
No free admissions to this political event. With a copy of the book included, a general-reception ticket was $75, a VIP ticket $500.
The Ward campaign told The Wanderer that about 850 people attended. People filled the ballroom from wall to wall, but it wasn’t so packed that it would have been tough to move around.
The evening began with a private VIP reception at 5 o’clock, lasting about an hour, followed by a 42-minute rally with the major speakers, then stretching into the evening with hundreds of people lining up for Ingraham to autograph copies of her book in a separate room. Ingraham had told her national radio audience earlier that an extra 500 copies were being rushed to Scottsdale.
Penning an indecipherable celebrity scrawl in the books, she tirelessly posed for photos with her fans.
Earlier, Ingraham told the audience that Flake should go join the globalist Democrats, “or retire early.” When she mentioned Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), people booed, as they did the name of Arizona U.S. Sen. John McCain.
Despite all of McConnell’s Senate experience, Ingraham said, “he could not put the points on the board” to lead a successful repeal of Obamacare.
With Bannon having been an important topic of discussion at the White House the previous day, October 16, media interest increased over his appearance here at Ingraham and Ward’s event. About 10 news cameras on tripods on a platform in the ballroom were behind about 40 chairs for reporters along two rows of tables.
Trump and McConnell had lunched at a peace-making session between themselves in Washington, D.C., after Bannon, now a White House outsider, called for McConnell to be dislodged from power.
The president had said, “I understand fully how Steve Bannon feels,” but, with McConnell later standing by his side at a Rose Garden news conference on October 16, Trump said he’d see if he could talk Bannon out of his war plans.
Bannon didn’t sound any conciliatory notes in Scottsdale, though. Indeed, he cited Trump as a necessary ally in his battle.
Introduced here by Ingraham as “the man in black” because of his customary garb, Bannon “riles up all the right people,” the radio host added, winning a large round of applause for the combative head of Breitbart News.
The former White House chief strategist warned the gathering that the elite “want to rule over you from an imperial city,” like “a new aristocracy,” living in counties around the nation’s capital that now are wealthier than California’s Silicon Valley.
“The only way we’re going to take this down is with people like our great president, Donald J. Trump,” Bannon said.
Resistance to the elite constitutes “an open revolt, and it should be. These people hold you in total contempt,” Bannon said. “. . . They’re afraid of you. . . . They hold you in total and complete contempt. They think you’re a group of morons. . . .
“They’re going to reap the whirlwind,” he said, segueing to the Senate candidate nearby. “That whirlwind is Kelli Ward. . . . And Dr. Kelli Ward knows how to repeal and replace Obamacare.”
Bannon said the political fight will continue until election day, with the elite’s funding arrayed against the people. “It’s going to be their money versus your muscle.”
Ward described herself as “a liberty-loving constitutional conservative” ready to go to Washington, D.C., “and drain the swamp. . . ,
“As a family physician, I am a problem-solver,” Ward said. “. . . . Does that sound like something you want to see in Washington?”
She received cheers in reply.
“We need to work relentlessly to pull Obamacare out by the roots,” she said, then turned to the damage caused throughout society by illegal immigration, “and it has got to stop. . . .
“Who wants to build that wall?” Ward asked, generating audience cheers and chants of “Build that wall.”
However, she said, “Obviously, taking on the establishment on the left and the right is not easy.”
No Support This Time
One audience member was Ron Ludders, chairman of the Arizona Project Tea Party group in north Phoenix. He told The Wanderer that he eventually worked for Flake’s election to his first Senate term in 2012 only after a certain national conservative group repeatedly implored him to support Flake lest a Democrat win the open seat.
Ludders said he was reluctant to do so because of Flake’s spotty record as a Republican congressman, including supporting open borders, but he finally joined the effort to save the seat for the GOP because “Flake clearly was on his way to defeat. . . .
“Grudgingly, I finally agreed to help Flake, and put my reputation on the line to elect Flake,” Ludders said. “I had to convince Tea Party leaders around Arizona to grit their teeth and support Flake. He won but never thanked me or anyone else for their sacrifice. Flake will not receive this kind of support this time.”
On another topic, Ludders questioned the motives of liberals who say they care about the welfare of the Republican Party and want it to save it from damage by Trump.
“Why are liberals so concerned about what happens to the GOP unless they will be negatively affected by the outcome? America elected Donald Trump president and did so because of his populist message,” Ludders said. “Those who don’t respect the message sent to them by the American people are not abiding by the wishes of the electorate.
“Are we to impeach Trump — or replace the detractors of his populist agenda? The answer is clear, our system of government was designed for American voters to remove those who are encumbering the will of the people,” he said.
Ward’s staff had left a media packet in a folder on the table by each reporter’s chair, with the name of the individual media organization on the front of the folder.
One of the articles inside dismissed her reputation as “Chemtrails Kelli,” a smear dreamed up by McCain’s staff during her unsuccessful campaign against him last year.
The article, by the liberal Washington Post, noted that the Senate Leadership Fund, aligned with McConnell, is resurrecting that angle to try to protect Flake’s incumbency. The article recalled the accusation that Ward set up a town hall meeting in 2014 for conspiracy theories about chemtrails — chemicals allegedly dropped into the atmosphere by some agency for evil purposes.
Actually, the Post wrote, Ward, then a state senator, organized a meeting for constituents to hear from representatives with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality about environmental safety because of “relentless” concerns about chemtrails from constituents.
At the town hall, Ward noted “there was more concern on the issue in her district than other western districts, and that she had not seen evidence of the effects people were concerned about from existing environmental testing,” the Post said.
A separate story by another liberal source, Politifact, wasn’t included in the media packet but reached the same conclusion as the Post, that Ward was responding to constituent concerns by holding an informational meeting featuring state environmental staffers, not promoting chemtrails conspiracies.
One item of bad news for Ward on October 17 was a statement by two of her former campaign staffers that they concluded while working with her, “she showed that she isn’t up to the task of standing up to the pressure that causes so many candidates to betray voters when they get to Washington.”
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