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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Doubtful. No one- including the parties in question- cares about the runner up to a designated loser spot in a no name state level race. Even if this 15 time felon had lost 162-161(remember, there were only 383 votes cast in the republican primary), no one would have paid any attention to it until after he started shooting.

Heck, my state representative district(so safe R that democrats don't run a candidate) went to a runoff between a pornsite owner promising to play dirty on consolidating GOP power through explicit legal chicanery and a popular sitting incumbent, and it didn't even make local news(and it seems fairly apparent to me that he lost mostly because he owns a pornsite and the incumbent dragged a popular former governor into campaigning for her). Why? Because no one pays attention to a state representative race until a nutjob actually does something nutty. The number of sitting state reps all over the country who are crazy shitheads is fairly high, and no on pays attention to them at all most of the time. Even when they threaten to start civil wars and have ties to militia groups which cause evacuations of the state capitol it's like a page 5 story, and that's on a slow news day.