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Joshua Lott

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Has there ever been a more rage-filled celebration?

Arizona Republicans up and down the ballot gathered at a resort here for a unified election night “party.” But things didn’t go as planned.

The Fox News election-night coverage, playing on the jumbo TV screens here, carried unwanted news that the great “red wave” had not materialized across the country, at least not yet. And here in Arizona, where the GOP nominated MAGA-inspired election deniers for governor, senator, secretary of state and other positions, hopes for early victories on election night had vanished.

The organizers took the Fox News coverage off the big screens and played music instead. They played the Village People’s “YMCA” — twice. Shuttle buses full of partygoers began to filter out, and by 10 p.m. the crowd had thinned considerably. The celebration, if it came at all, would be delayed.

Instead, Arizona’s MAGA Republican leaders brought fury and fanaticism on election night.

They eschewed basic decency. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is “losing the gavel but finding the hammer,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told the crowd, joking about the attack on Pelosi’s husband that left him with a fractured skull — just as GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake did a week earlier. The crowd laughed.

They stoked paranoia. “By attending this event you have increased your chance of an FBI raid by about 50 percent,” the emcee, Benny Johnson, said.

They hurled insults every which way. “Merrick Garland needs some new pantyhose.” “Beto [O’Rourke] is a furry.” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is a “little man” whose “ears don’t match.” President Biden is a “lost child” with a “very dirty diaper.” Democrats are “lunatics.”

At a time that typically calls for magnanimity and reconciliation, they instead cried out for vengeance. When Anthony Fauci’s name was invoked, they chanted “Lock him up!” They vowed to be a “nightmare to Joe Biden” and to impeach his aides. “Sorry libs,” sneered the emcee. “Sucks to suck.”

They boasted about the radicalism they represented. “We have remade this party in our image,” said state party chair Kelli Ward, “of people who aren’t going to take any crap.”

“Who’s ready to elect a bunch of radical Republican conservatives?” asked another speaker. The crowd roared.

And they repeatedly invoked the latest MAGA conspiracy that Election Day glitches with voting tabulators in Maricopa, the behemoth Phoenix-area county, were a “criminal” attempt to commit “fraud” against Republicans.

Never mind that the glitches didn’t cause a single ballot not to be counted, nor a single voter to be denied the right to vote. And never mind that the county officials overseeing the election (lustily booed by the MAGA crowd) are Republicans.

It was an appropriately ugly end to this grotesque campaign, just one last attempt to generate disgust — not just toward Democrats but toward the democratic process.

Armed men in tactical gear staked out ballot drop boxes in Democratic areas of Maricopa in a blatant attempt to intimidate voters. In Cochise County, GOP leaders <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/election-midterms-2022/card/judge-blocks-gop-order-to-hand-count-ballots-in-rural-arizona-county-3GOYi7rOXaVXE9BcEg2X" target=_blank>attacked a judge</a> for political bias after their scheme to hand-count all ballots was shot down. There was a break-in at Democratic gubernatorial nominee Katie Hobbs’s office, followed by receipt of white powder by mail at Lake’s. Maricopa’s sheriff, warning political leaders not “to incite violence or riots” with false claims, sent extra police to polling places, and barricades went up around elections offices.

For the Arizona GOP’s “Election Night Watch Party,” Lake, GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters and other Republicans arranged a joint celebration at the Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch in this upscale suburb.

After a campaign against supposed Democratic “elites,” Republican elites celebrated in style. A procession of luxury cars — BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, Tesla, even a Rolls-Royce — dotted the valet line in the conference resort’s manicured driveway, lined with palm trees. VIPs who paid $500 a head were whisked off to a private reception, and higher rollers who shelled out $1,000 for the “private experience package” to another.

Hoi polloi, for $20 a ticket, squeezed into the back of the ballroom near the media or watched on jumbo screens in two courtyards (“Paradise Park Lawn”) strung with bistro lights. They could partake of the included pizza bar and a crudite display worthy of Mehmet Oz, but the 12-year-old Glenlivet at the cash bar was $12 a shot. A man wearing a brick-patterned novelty suit explained his costume to me: “It’s a border wall!”

On the ballroom stage, the speakers seemed impervious to the developing trend of the evening:

“We’re going to see a red tsunami!”

A few minutes after 10 p.m. local time, Kari Lake took the stage with a fresh stream of invective: “Corruption.” “Cheaters and crooks.” “BS and garbage.” “Incompetent people running the show in Arizona.” “Propagandists.” “Fake media.” “Incompetency.”

“We will take the victory when it comes,” she told them. “We will not stop fighting until we have every legal vote counted.”

She departed quickly, and Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” blasted from the loudspeakers.

White House Correspondent Association's Beckman Award

National Press Club's Gingras Prize

Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America (Doubleday, 2010)

Homo Politicus (Doubleday, 2008)

Smashmouth (Basic Books, 2001)

The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five-Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party (Doubleday, 2022)

Yale University, BA cum laude in political science

Dana Milbank is an opinion columnist for The Washington Post. He sketches the foolish, the fallacious and the felonious in politics. His new book is “The Destructionists: The 25-Year Crackup of the Republican Party” (Doubleday). 