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Political commentator Alice Stewart has made an interesting prediction; Republican politicians will begin to say "Let's stop focusing on the past" (Donald Trump's loss in 2020 and associated angsts) after certain filing deadlines pass.

Speaking of primaries, there's also the factor that many are keeping in the back of their minds - they realize that if they stick their head too far out of the foxhole they're going to be knocked down by Donald Trump.

So mark my word, after the filing deadlines in a lot of these states when people realize "hey, I don't have a primary opponent and Donald Trump can not put one in against me", then we're going to see, I believe, a lot more people coming out and saying "Let's stop talking about the past, and let's start talking about the future." And that's going to happen after these filing deadlines.

The quoted bit begins after about 09:30

Question: What and when are the filing deadlines after which Alice Stewart predicts Republican congress members will start saying "Let's stop talking about the past"?

The CNN video See Ted Cruz’s big flip on Jan. 6 after McConnell’s remark cued at the beginning of the segment 03:34

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The filing deadlines she is talking about are the last day that a given state will let someone file the paperwork to be listed on that state's primary election ballot. Ballotpedia has a nice list of when all those dates currently are for each state's 2022 elections. I won't list all 50 here, but the earliest was Texas at 12/13/2021, and the current latest is Louisiana with 7/22/2022. (PA does not have a date set at the moment, per court order suspending it.)

The idea here is that once the filing deadline has passed, no more primary candidates can join the race, which means that a Republican (in this example) who doesn't currently have a challenger can pivot away from Trump's vision of the party without worrying about being primaried out of their seat by someone further to the right.

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  • Assuming, that is, that they haven't already drawn a primary challenger
    – divibisan
    Commented Feb 11, 2022 at 0:22
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    @divibisan Very true, but Stewart's quote only mentions candidates who don't have one. I added that qualifier.
    – Bobson
    Commented Feb 11, 2022 at 0:25

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