Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney can stand up to Arizona's MAGA slate. Why can't Doug Ducey?

Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois on Tuesday endorsed Democrats Katie Hobbs and Adrian Fontes for governor and secretary of state.

“Those who are responsible for the violence on January 6th and those who have pushed the Big Lie since the 2020 election must not gain higher office,” wrote Kinzinger, a member of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the nation’s Capitol. “The fate of our Republic depends on that.”

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming traveled to Arizona last week to warn against voting for Republicans Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, a pair of election deniers who have actually called for arrests of their opponents based upon some fantasy belief that the 2020 election was stolen.

“The first thing that we have to understand is that we’ve never been where we are,” Cheney told a group of ASU students last week. “We’ve never been in a phase, a place where we’re facing this kind of a threat. And that’s because we’re facing a threat from a former president who is attempting to unravel the Republic.”

Meanwhile, here in Arizona, Gov. Doug Ducey has been unable to locate his spine.

Ducey called Lake 'misleading,' then endorsed her

In July, he called out Lake, taking to CNN to warn that she was “misleading voters” about election integrity and claiming that her whole campaign was “an act”.

“This is all an act,” he said at the time. “She’s been putting on a show for some time now and we’ll see if the voters of Arizona buy it.”

In August, he endorsed her.

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“This is going to be an important election given the issues our state is facing and it’s important for Arizona Republicans to unite behind our slate of candidates,” Ducey tweeted, shortly after the primary election.

The governor who in 2020 defended Arizona’s election – the one who certified the results even as then-President Donald Trump’s “Hail to the Chief” ringtone was chiming on his cellphone – apparently has no interest in defending his state from a MAGA slate that seems intent on dismantling democracy.

Other Republicans have been more outspoken

Clearly, it wouldn’t be good for his political career, as Kinzinger, Cheney and any other traditional conservative who dared to stand against the party’s America First stampede has already found out.

Fortunately, there are a few Republicans left in our state who are still possessed of a backbone, real patriots willing to put country before party or personal ambition, and stand up to the extremists who have taken over the once-Grand Old Party.

Mesa Mayor John Giles has endorsed Hobbs, calling Lake “dangerous”.

“It’s not a choice between Republicans and Democrats,” he said on Sunday, as Trump rallied elsewhere in his deeply conservative city. “It’s a choice between sanity and chaos.”

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House Speaker Rusty Bowers on Monday called Finchem “a very dangerous man” and a threat to the Constitution given his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election.

“I don’t plan to support anybody who doesn’t pass my litmus test of honesty and that honesty is, was it stolen or not. And if you can still believe, after all we’ve been through and all the rounds of audits and reviews of the processes, that yes it was stolen then you fail my litmus test,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “I would never vote for Mark Finchem. I’m not looking for a fight with Mark Finchem but I know Mark Finchem and frankly, in my opinion, he’s a very dangerous man.”

He won't take a stand when it matters most

One who might very well become Arizona’s next secretary of state – a candidate who has made it clear he would work to overturn any election with which he doesn’t agree.

One who, along with Lake, has spent nearly two years telling us that Arizona’s elections are corrupt, that dirty elections officials have conspired with global elites to steal that which is most sacred: our vote.

And they’re really good at it. Despite any shred of actual evidence that any of it is true, a shockingly high number of Republicans believe it. It’s how we have arrived at this tipping point, with the most extreme slate of candidates that Arizona has ever seen.

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And a shockingly high number of prominent Republicans – traditional business-oriented conservatives – have stood silently and declined to defend democracy.

Or at least, to defend it now, when it counts the most.

Blame it on Biden, who promised to govern from the center then ran to the left to embrace progressive policies. Biden, who has bungled the border, opening the door for extremists to scream "invasion".

Blame it on Trump, whose grip on the party remains ironfisted demanding fealty only to one man and his grievances and who cares if it tears this country apart.

Blame it the absense of courage to take on a campaign built on a mountain of lies and fueled by absolute, unending outrage.

How does democracy survive? Don't ask Ducey

“Less talk, more arrests,” Finchem tweeted on Monday.

So says the man who, along with Lake and attorney general candidate Abe Hamadeh, just might succeed in shredding the Constitution.

It’s just a piece of paper, after all.

How does a democracy survive when half the people don’t believe in it?

I’d ask Gov. Ducey but he was busy on Tuesday, campaigning to send Blake Masters to the Senate -- a guy who has said he wouldn’t have voted to certify America's vote in 2020.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Doug Ducey won't stand up to Arizona's MAGA slate when it counts