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January 30, 2024

Some boos notwithstanding, don’t write off Kari Lake yet

By Andrea Widburg

Around 36 hours ago, a shocking video emerged: Arizonans were booing Kari Lake, the hottest political star, not just in Arizona but in America (other than Donald Trump, of course). However, there’s a strong possibility that the video may have been a matter of the videographer’s proximity rather than a large-scale opposition to the Arizona political star.

The big news was that, on Saturday, when Kari Lake made her appearance at the state’s GOP gathering, she was greeted with boos. The excitement from political observers about this bit of news was palpable, especially from the left side of the aisle:

Was it really true that Lake, having exposed Jeff DeWit for having offered her a bribe to get her to withdraw from the race to become Arizona’s Republican senator, went too far? It’s one thing to have problems within your party. It’s another thing to expose them to the world. Based on the information available yesterday, reasonable minds suspected that Kari Lake might have damaged her career in Arizona (a state sadly known for political corruption) by exposing DeWit’s conduct.

However, there’s another hypothesis, and that is based on the nature of sound and how it travels. For example, if you find yourself at a concert seated right next to the brass, brass is all that you’ll hear. Likewise, if you’re too near the flute section, all the music has a flute-y overtone. That’s why an orchestra is carefully arranged with the loudest instruments in the back, the conductor in the dead center, and the audience at some distance from the orchestra’s discrete parts. Without that balance and distance, you will never understand the whole.

I mention all of this because I heard from someone who was, as he said, “present, with voting privileges, Saturday when Kari Lake took the stage.” According to my correspondent:

In the Maricopa County contingent, I was seated very near the middle of the venue.  The roar of approval was so loud that it sounded enthusiastic and comprehensive.  We may have given her standing applause, but my memory is hazy since we did for several people who took the stage, but I think she was one.

It wasn't until that evening when I looked at a NYT article on the event, that I learned someone had booed.   I saw that repeated in the Daily Mail and Newsweek, but still had my doubts.

However, the clip with the American Thinker article does show some few people booing so it did occur.  But the group sounds tiny and isolated compared to the mass of attendees.  Perhaps it is only a coincidence that the microphone was placed near this group where booing could be recorded.  And perhaps not.  Odd how this became the headline for so many news stories at once and so quickly.

From this area of the forum we had many, many, many points of order and even a motion to adjourn later in the day that mainly aimed to keep the candidate who ultimately won by a landslide off the ballot.  Seemed similar to the many efforts to prevent us from having a vote one way or the other for President Trump.

If those in the corner who were booing near a microphone represented any significant number, why did the candidate they fought so hard to keep off the ballot win by a landslide?

The booing story seems to me to have been rigged, but perhaps I am reading too much into it.

We at American Thinker cannot provide a definitive answer to whether Kari Lake was roundly booed or whether a small group booed her. That answer will come from Arizona’s Republican voters during the state’s primary. All we can do is point out that, while facts are stubborn things, our understanding of those facts may vary depending on our perspective.

Image: Kari Lake (edited). YouTube screen grab.

 

 

 

 

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