GOP voters rebuff the worst of the wingnuts

Woody Allen divided life into two dismal categories: horrible and miserable. Which seemed unduly pessimistic up until Tuesday’s Republican primary, when several downright horrible candidates were defeated by the merely miserable.

In some other context, Florida moderates wouldn’t find much solace in a primary win by the likes of Winter Park’s Cory Mills. The congressional candidate’s campaign ad featured the camouflage-clad businessman wielding an assault rifle and bragging that his company manufactures “riot control munitions.”

Mills boasted that his business had supplied the tear gas canisters police lobbed at “Hillary Clinton protesters,” “left wing protesters,” “antifa rioters,” and “Black Lives Matter” protestors.” (No mention of Jan. 6 insurrectionists.)

His campaign described Mills as an all-out, Trump-embracing, gun-loving, anti-woke, election-denying, black-activist-disparaging, immigrant basher.

But take heart. Mills isn’t Anthony Sabatini. Sabatini, the most formidable among Mills’ seven primary opponents, offered Republican voters in the Seventh Congressional District a stark downgrade from miserable to very, very horrible.

A two-term state representative from Howey-in-the-Hills without a notable legislative achievement on his resume, Sabatini created an outrageous persona spouting rightwing rhetoric. He called Disney World: “pedo world.” After a 17-year-old gunned down Black Lives Matter protestors in Wisconsin, he tweeted “KYLE RITTENHOUSE FOR CONGRESS.”

After the FBI retrieved classified documents from Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, Sabatini lit up Twitter with hyperbolic nonsense about arresting FBI agents.

Sabatini out-bashed Mills with his own attacks on immigrants, Black protestors and the “gestapo” capitol police. He out-denied other election deniers, demanding an audit of every Florida county that Trump lost in 2020. The shameless Sabatini suggested that because Mills’ wife was born in Iraq, she must be “anti-Christian.”

Over in the 11th Congressional District, moderates find U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster about as palatable as curdled milk. The Winter Park congressman is a longtime darling of the NRA. He opposes gay marriage, climate change legislation and abortion (with no exceptions for rape or incest). Webster was among 126 congressional Republicans who joined a lawsuit challenging Joe Biden’s election.

But Daniel Webster is no Laura Loomer. Webster, seeking re-election, defeated Loomer in Tuesday’s primary, although the far-right white nationalist received a shocking 44% of the vote.

After votes were tabulated, Loomer emulated her party’s sore-loser-in-chief and claimed election fraud. “I’m not conceding because I’m a winner,” she said.

Her lack of grace was no surprise. Loomer has yet to concede the 2020 congressional election she lost to Lois Frankel in Florida’s 21st District.

Loomer, more performance artist than serious politician, has been banned from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for posting Islamophobic rants. She became infamous hereabouts while “reporting” for conspiracy wrangler Alex Jones’ InfoWars. She claimed survivors of the Parkland school killings were paid actors in a faked massacre. “It’s obvious these kids are reading a screen or notes someone else wrote for them,” she said.

Voters rejected other horribles. Vern Buchanan, the very conservative, anti-abortion, pro-gun Republican congressman from Sarasota, crushed far-right primary challenger Martin Hyde, who, after FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago, said, “I wish they’d turn up at my home ‘cause they’d have gone home in a body bag.”

Hyde was once recorded on a police body cam threatening to ruin the career of a Sarasota officer who had stopped him for a traffic offense. Another video captured a racist rant directed at Puerto Rican teenagers.

Whatever grudges progressives and moderates might hold against Vern Buchanan, he saved America from Martin Hyde.

A former Volusia County Council member lost his bid for a school board seat after he claimed that a cabal of Democrats and Hollywood elites were kidnapping and butchering thousands of American children, then drinking their blood.

IAfter a campaign, wrought with bizarre accusations and apparent death threats, Anna Paulina Luna won the Congressional District 13 nomination.

Luna is an American First Republican endorsed by Donald Trump who embraces his special brand of lunacy. Folks on the left or in the middle normally wouldn’t find much to like in Luna.

Except, the infamous rightwing political operative and Trump advisor Roger Stone accused Luna of secretly supporting liberal immigration policies. Stone supported one of Luna’s opponents.

Stone’s enmity alone is enough to move to Luna out of the horrible category. She’s merely miserable.

Fred Grimm