Let’s Start the Discussion About the GAGOP
Let’s talk about the GAGOP right now. Unless you have lived under a rock for the last 2 election cycles, the GAGOP has proven to be a dumpster fire. The GAGOP has lost 3 Senate seats. The first go with Loeffler was sort of understandable. She just wasn’t a good candidate. There’s no way you can paint it any other way. And, we can talk policy all day long. She had a questionable background, and went way off to the “right of Attila the Hun”. She was kind of lackluster personality-wise, so it was hard for her to even sell herself as a personality. Perdue was his own bag of issues. He was also part of the “establishment” class and he wasn’t exciting. He also didn’t really campaign. Say what you want about what the people “should” care about. The vast majority of voters tend to be swayed by rhetoric otherwise the same dud elected officials wouldn’t continue to be voted in.
And then we have this situation with Herschel and Warnock. It was deeply profound that two black men were running against one another for a US Senate seat in a former deeply confederate state. I can give credit there. That isn’t so much a testament to them as candidates as it is to how far Georgia has come socially over the last 60 years. But, there again, Warnock and Walker both had equally questionable records.
HOWEVER, with all of that said, there is still no reason why the GAGOP couldn’t get their act together for any one of those races and actually turn out the vote. As a “Hail Mary”, Kemp sent his team in to help Herschel which I think was a big help. However, in a lot of ways it was too little too late. That’s not the fault of Kemp and his team though. Why was Kemp the one that had to come in and attempt to save the day? Why wasn’t the GAGOP already running interference? Why didn’t they have a skeleton of a strategy already in place AFTER the primary? In reality, Kemp’s team should have been the reinforcements, not the ones leading the charge at the very last minute.
It’s clear that the RNC is a hot mess. I’m not even going to touch that right now because what affects us immediately is our State Party. Surface-level training was given by the Trump Victory team. And while it was a good idea, in theory, to get everyone on the same page with this Trump Victory Leadership Initiative, it was terrible in practice. There wasn’t a lot of encouragement or attention given from that team to actual county parties to get the base engaged and grassroots efforts going. There was a lot of cheerleading going on and not a lot of real work. Also, you had some questionable antics from the leadership of the GAGOP. For instance, why am I on the GRA email list when I have never signed up for it? Who gave my email over to them? I could make a guess but I shall refrain.
There seemed to be no real expectation of accountability from the local parties to the State Party. How could that even happen when the State Party couldn’t even hold itself accountable? With all of that said, we should look to CD 9’s GOP as a model for how the State GOP should be run. In fact, it is probably the most organized set of county parties in the State of Georgia and that is largely because of the efforts of the leadership in the 9th District. Furthermore, it has remained the solid red bulwark and the red wall for Georgia. I will write more on all of this inner-party drama because God knows, we need to heal the division in our party. To do that, we have to start with a leadership who has the experience and a track record of successfully leading, training, and organizing.
