I can think of lots of legitimate reasons why Republican Party Chair Jennifer Carnahan should resign.
Pathetic fundraising. No statewide offices held. Unwillingness to condemn traitorous insurrectionists and their inciter.
However, knowing a donor and activist accused of sex trafficking isn’t one of them.
Now, if it’s discovered that Carnahan knew about the child victimization and did nothing about it, that’s different. But as far as I know, that evidence doesn’t exist. Until and unless proof surfaces, Carnahan doesn’t deserve to lose her position over a purely “guilt by association” charge. Party chairs and politicians need to work with thousands of people, and they can’t be expected to know everything about all of them.
Meanwhile, however, the evidence that Chair Carnahan is breathtakingly cruel has been confirmed. Oddly buried at the end of a long Pioneer Press article is this shocking tidbit:
Carnahan also confirmed that an audio clip being circulated by her critics on social media contains callous comments that she made about her husband’s (Minnesota Congressman Jim Hagedorn) medical condition during a phone conversation. Hagedorn is battling stage four kidney cancer, and announced last month that he’d had a recurrence. He was first diagnosed in February of 2019, shortly after he took office and a couple months after they were married in December 2018. Doctors removed his affected kidney in December of 2020 after a course of immunotherapy.
“I don’t care. Jim, he’s going to die of cancer in two years,” she can he heard saying. “So be it.”
Gulp.
For the record, the leader of the party that endlessly preaches “personal responsibility” blames the comment on, wait for it, wine and grief.
That might be the most lame crisis response I’ve ever heard. Millions of spouses with terminally ill spouses feel grief and indulge in wine, but their grief and buzz doesn’t cause them to express indifference.
This part is pretty damning. Then again, it probably won’t drive her out her job. If mere cruelty were a disqualifier, Republicans still wouldn’t be worshiping en masse at the altar of a man who mocks handicapped people, brags about being a serial groper of women’s genitals, screws a porn star while his wife is carrying his child, and belittles a decorated prisoner of war.
Fortunately for Carnahan, in today’s Republican Party, cruelty clearly isn’t close to a disqualifier.
Clearly the GOP in MN is pretty pathetic, and Carnahan is probably at least part of the reason for that. They probably should dump her, but who have they got to replace her? Probably best not to do so until they decide to make a big break with the past–and I don’t think they have any intention to do that. For better or worse, they are riding Trumpism wherever it is going to take them.
Oh, and isn’t Lazzaro sort of our own version of Florida Man?
I don’t know what rational person would donate money to the MN GOP right now, with or without Carnahan. What a mess, and I’m not sure we know everything yet.