Good Luck, Elise: Stefanik Still Wants To Be President
“FAFO” (Fuck-Around-And-Find-Out) is a coinage that probably hasn’t yet made it to a dictionary near you, but it has gained considerable traction of late. And among those millions of Trump voters who are currently finding out, in quite painful fashion, the malignant forces with which they fucked around, there’s the special case of Elise Stefanik, about whom I wrote this piece in January 2023. Stefanik’s star was rising then, back when Kevin McCarthy was taking control — if you can call it that — of the House. Having sold her soul completely to Trump, she might understand now what was totally obvious even then: that Trump is where political careers go to die. You’ll notice also in this piece that I failed to anticipate Trump’s second term, and got a number of other minor things wrong. All I can say is I was young and foolish.
It isn’t often that The New York Times and The Washington Post do lengthy features on the same politician in the same week. So when Elise Stefanik was given several thousand words in two major papers, my curiosity was duly piqued.
The two pieces (here and here) are similar profiles of Stefanik, age 38, and her remarkable transformation from Harvard-educated “moderate” Republican, to ultra-MAGA ideologue. The subhead of the Times article states the theme of both: