Trump's Arizona Trip Kicks Off Ugly GOP Senate Primary Season
By CAMERON JOSEPH Published AUGUST 22, 2017 6:00 AM
Senate Republicans’ primary woes are back, with a Grand Canyon-sized vengeance. President Trump is heading to Arizona for a Tuesday campaign rally where he’s expected to take aim at primary-plagued Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ).
The event marks the unofficial kickoff of a primary election cycle that risks going sideways on a party that had finally felt like it had figured out how to contain its congressional primary problems.
For two elections in a row, the Senate GOP establishment managed to steamroll the type of fatally flawed gaffe-prone candidates that cost the party the majority in 2010 and 2012, spending heavily on their preferred candidates to whack-a-mole underfunded and flawed challengers in places like Mississippi, North Carolina and Kansas.
But in the 2018 cycle party strategists face a chaotic map exacerbated by a petulant president who seems more interested in settling scores with his own party’s critics than defeating vulnerable Democrats.
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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/trumps-arizona-trip-kicks-off-ugly-gop-primary-season
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Flake Dismisses Trump’s Support For Primary Challenger Kelli Ward
By CAITLIN MACNEAL Published AUGUST 22, 2017 8:17 AM
The evening before President Donald Trump’s rally in Arizona, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) told reporters that he is not concerned about the potential for Trump to back one of the Republican primary challengers to Flake in his 2018 re-election bid.
“I don’t worry about it at all,” Flake told reporters in Arizona on Monday when asked about Trump’s criticism of him on Twitter, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In a tweet last week, Trump called Flake “toxic” and declared that the senator is “weak” on immigration issues and crime. The President applauded Republican state Sen. Kelli Ward for challenging Flake, an atypical move for a president.
Asked about Trump’s support for Ward, Flake said, “That’s not my realm. That’s somebody else’s. I just — I’m running my own campaign. It’s going well. And what the president does, that’s his prerogative,” per the LA Times.
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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jeff-flake-dismisses-trump-support-kelli-ward
