Kari Lake did not just topple the head of the Arizona Republican Party

Republicans have a long association with secret audio tapes.

Remember Richard Nixon and Rose Mary Woods?

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake and her operatives are such prolific tapers of things surreptitious that they have actually connected our modern era with those Watergate days of old, when Nixon would record and Woods would wash.

Kari Lake loves to record others

In 2022, Lake’s campaign produced a secret audio-video recording of a phone conversation with GOP lawyers and a Maricopa County attorney by the name of Tom Liddy, son of lead Watergate plumber G. Gordon Liddy.

It was supposed to expose something nefarious, but just went to show that Lake’s people drive Liddy as crazy as everyone else.

More importantly, it showed Kari Lake has closed the circle on that grand Republican tradition of amateur spycraft.

Last fall, Lake was wearing a microphone during a “chance” airport encounter with her Democratic opponent in Arizona’s U.S. Senate race, Ruben Gallego.

Lake could be seen jumping down Gallego’s throat on illegal immigration.

An edited video of the confrontation was leaked to conservative media, and one wonders why.

Gallego came off as decent. Lake came off as a jerk.

What can we learn from her leaked tape?

Alas, there are lessons to learn from the latest Kari Lake production, a secret recording from last February in which then Arizona Republican Party Chair Jeff DeWit carried to her a proposed bribe to sit out the Senate race.

Here are five takeaways from that tape:

Lesson 1: Lake has a potty mouth

Little Miss “I’m on God’s Time” swears like a Marine Corps drill sergeant when she speaks in private.

(Yes, Kari, I know. Nobody gives a s---).

Lesson 2: No one will trust her now

Kari Lake will spend every morning for the rest of her life memorizing the weather report, because that’s about the only topic anyone will broach with her in future chance encounters.

Never to be trusted again, Lake will live in infamy with those other tell-all conversationalists Harry and Meghan.

It’s safe to say that after this week, Lake has probably seen the last of her invitations to Mar-A-Lago.

Lesson 3: DeWit is a terrible messenger

The Arizona Republican Party is a snake pit that was led on paper by the bumptious Jeff DeWit, who challenges Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell for the biggest clod in MAGA world.

You can be assured the “powerful people” whose proposal he carried to Lake weren’t all that powerful and all that sophisticated, otherwise they wouldn’t have trusted DeWit to play their messenger boy.

It would be like the Corleone’s sending Gomer Pyle to make you the offer you can’t refuse.

Lesson 4: Lake is King Cobra of GOP snakes

If the Arizona GOP is a snake pit then King Cobra is Kari Lake.

She finished her secretly recorded conversation with DeWit by telling him she had a lot to do before catching her flight for the CPAC conference in D.C.

“I’ve gotta get working,” she told him. “I love ya, but I’ve gotta get working.”

“I love ya,” in this sense, is a qualified expression.

It means “I need to hone the edge on my shiv before I stick it in your back.”

Lesson 5: DeWit was expendable in Lake's game

We don’t know what her game is, but we know Kari Lake is lying.

Responding to the release of the DeWit tape to British media, Lake, in New Hampshire, said this:

“We can’t have somebody who’s corrupt and compromised running the Republican Party.”

Later, in an interview with KTAR’s Mike Broomhead, she said, “The audio speaks for itself. It’s reprehensible. I’m calling for Jeff DeWit to resign immediately. Our state party needs to be functioning. We can’t have somebody who behaves in an unethical manner like that running it.”

And later:

“... I think the people need to know what is happening in politics and in government. And we need to clean this mess up. You know President Trump calls it a swamp. It is a filthy, dirty swamp.”

So the million-dollar question is this, why did Kari Lake — knowing the head of the Arizona Republican Party was “unethical” and “corrupt” — wait 10 months to publicly call for his resignation?

Truth is, DeWit never ran the AZ GOP

Kari Lake is the reigning power in the Arizona Republican Party. At any moment, she could have squashed Jeff DeWit like a pissant.

Yet, she waited until now:

The week Donald Trump is returning to Arizona. The week of the state party’s annual meeting.

Through March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December and half of January, Lake was satisfied with Darth Vader running the Arizona Republican Party.

Lake and DeWit: Set Arizona GOP on self-destruct

Why?

Because Jeff DeWit isn’t Darth Vader, and he never ran the Arizona Republican Party.

Kari Lake runs the Arizona Republican Party.

And everyone and everything else is expendable.

The biggest dope here isn't even Republican

Which brings us to the biggest knucklehead of them all.

Somewhere Ruben Gallego, Kari Lake’s Democratic opponent, is reading his iPhone and cursing himself.

“Why am I working my ass off raising money? Why am I making speeches? Why am I kissing babies and shaking hands?

“Why am I not in the Virgin Islands sipping rum from a coconut shell while Kari Lake wins my election for me?”

The real fool is always the last to know.

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Kari Lake did not just take out the head of the AZ GOP