What a difference a month can make.
July started with Georgia Republicans giddy about former President Donald Trump’s apparent glide path in November, a seeming inevitability after President Joe Biden’s June 27 debate catastrophe. By the time August arrived, Biden was gone from the ticket, and so was the confidence among the MAGA faithful.
Credit: Geoff Duncan
Credit: Geoff Duncan
Not only had Vice President Kamala Harris exceeded early expectations as the new Democratic standard-bearer, but Trump had reverted to his anger-filled ways and was again awkwardly lashing out at our state’s popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp.
The Trump loyalists in the ranks of the Georgia GOP were caught between the impossible rock and hard place, forced to pick between an accomplished second-term governor and a defeated and disgraced former president whose bid for a second term feels shakier by the day. It was entertaining scrolling through the plethora of word salad social media posts from this GOP group trying to support Kemp and Trump in the same breath.
Both the assassination attempt and Trump’s call for “unity” felt like distant memories. Consider the tale of two campaign rallies at Georgia State University’s Convocation Center. Held days apart, the Harris event projected forward-looking energy and unity. Yes, the campaign was new and the candidate untested, but finally change was in the air.
The Trump show, on the other hand, was a familiar jumble of personal grievances and backward-looking complaints centered around the 2020 election that he lost fair and square. As a headline from The Atlanta Journal Constitution described, “Donald Trump attacks Brian Kemp at Atlanta rally and revives internal GOP war.”
So much for those calls for unity.
Trump claimed that Kemp is “very bad” for the GOP, another statement not only demonstrably false but also contradicted by facts. A poll earlier showed Kemp’s approval rating at 60 percent. Trump’s image is underwater in our state, with just 46% seeing him favorably compared with 49% unfavorably, according to one survey from Quinnipiac University. Among independent voters, who will decide the November election, the gulf is even wider: 43-51 percent. Those are the voters that propelled Kemp to a sweeping margin of victory of nearly 300,000 votes against Stacey Abrams — no need for him “to find 11,780 votes,” as Trump demanded of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
The broader takeaway from the two events is one campaign is trying to build a broad coalition of ideas while the other would rather shrink to core supporters able to pass a fealty test to its cultlike leader.
If you rebuff maniacal schemes seeking to overturn a free and fairly decided election, as Kemp had the courage to do, you’re a “bad guy, a disloyal guy.” Or, as in former Vice President Mike Pence’s case, you ending up facing calls for your execution as the U.S. Capitol gets ransacked by a Trump-inspired mob.
With the Trumpers reeling, some have started losing their moorings. In a weird social media temper tantrum, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party threatened to permanently ban me from the party. My “sin” was endorsing Biden and then Harris as a means of ending the Trump era.
The rant symbolizes the rot in the GOP. Our party revolves less around convictions and governing policies and more toward a cult of personality. Ironically, Trump is a man who spent portions of his adult life as a registered Democrat and whose majority of campaign donations went to Democrats — including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and even Harris when she was running for California attorney general.
The message from the Trump faithful to Republicans who support a different course is clear: There is no place for you in our ranks. Politics should be about attracting more voters, not fewer — to win an election, but more importantly, to win the hearts and minds of a governing majority.
I get it. Politics is team sport with different jerseys. It’s not easy to go on the other side, especially when their policy positions don’t align with yours on most issues. My hope is that Harris will continue to extend an olive branch to those looking for a new home in November. Time will tell if that works out.
I do know this: The outcome of saddling up for another four years with Trump is preordained to be cloaked in chaos, anger and vitriol, the same unproductive position as when he disgracefully left office last time. Trump’s obsession with power fuels head-scratching disappointments at unexplainable times and places. This weekend’s rally was another painful example.
At the very least, four years under Harris will provide the GOP time to put the pieces back together without Trump and hopefully give this lifelong Republican a chance to help rebuild the party I’ve always called home.
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