Revenge party
Republicans v Trump and Trump v Republicans.
Republican governors hatched the plan months ago. Meeting at the desert Biltmore resort in Phoenix in mid-November, they agreed to confront a new threat to their incumbents: Former president Donald Trump was ramping up support for primary challengers as part of what one former governor called “a personal vendetta tour.”
The governors want to be re-elected. Trump wants to smash everything. It turns out there are drawbacks to having an evil toddler-brain as the Top Party Guy.
The gambit is set to culminate Tuesday in Georgia, where Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is heavily favored to defeat former senator David Perdue in a closely-watched primary. Trump recruited Perdue and made him his marquee candidate in a larger crusade against GOP officeholders who opposed his fight to overturn the 2020 election, which was rooted in false claims about fraud.
Revenge first, revenge last, revenge no matter what.
A parade of Republican governors and luminaries have lined up to protect Kemp. And former vice president Mike Pence, who once served as governor of Indiana, will appear with Kemp on Monday — setting the stage for Pence’s most direct confrontation yet against Trump in the midterms.
Splits. Irreconcilable. They will never be besties again.
The clash has brought into focus an extraordinary battle over the future direction of the GOP that extends well beyond Georgia. On one side is an aggrieved former president who retains widespread loyalty in the party from voters. On the other, conservative governors who align with Trump on many issues but have grown tired of his election claims, which post-election audits have shown to be false.
And, quite possibly, tired of Trump himself. He doesn’t wear well.
Angry that Kemp refused to help him overturn the election results in a key battleground state, Trump set outto topple him. He called him “a turncoat,” a “coward” and “a complete and total disaster.” He pumped $2.64 million from his political action committee into efforts to unseat Kemp, far more than the former president has spent on any other race.
“It’s not easy to beat a sitting governor,” Trump said in a Monday interview with The Post. “I’m the one who got that guy elected. I endorsed him, and he won. He’s not good on election integrity, and he did a terrible job on election integrity. We’ll see what happens.”
Trump wouldn’t know election integrity if it bit him on the ass grabbed him by the pussy.
Of course Kemp is not a good man just because Trump hates him. He’s down with the voter suppression thing.
On the campaign trail, Kemp touts conservative policies he and the GOP-controlled state legislature enacted during his term, including an election security law that voting rights groups argued would lead to voter suppression and brought backlash from civil and business leaders in the state.
“Election security” is code for not letting Them vote.
I’m hoping the lack of concensus in the Republican primary will bode well for Stacy Abrams. I think she stands a good chance of winning at this point. Georgia had Democratic governors for the entire 20th century and only Republicans since.
Can both sides lose, please? If Trump loses, storms off in a huff, taking his supporters with him and splitting the Republican Party, I’d be happy with that. Splitting the right makes it less dangerous. I think. Trump and his right-wing loonies could go off into the wilderness, leaving less insane Republicans to move a little closer to the center. Probably fantasy, but one can hope.
YNnB, in all honesty, I think the less insane republicans have already lost the party. It belongs to the MAGA’s and the outright theocrats and fascists now. Those with any real principles have already left the party and publicly declared that it should be nuked from orbit and the ground salted. Those who we used to consider awful people have left the party and are trying to reform it from outside, I guess with the aim of rejoining and resuming leadership roles (looking at the Lincoln project et al). Deluded. If they want a true conservative party, they’re going to have to start one from scratch. Only problem is that very few people want a true, principled conservative party. Too many people who hold traditional conservative values also hold string views on race, religion, abortion, sexuality, gender and social welfare. Looking down on and hating others is part and parcel of who they are. They may tut tut at the way out wackos, but they’ll still vote Republican all the way down the ticket regardless.
The cold reality is that a fair chunk of the population is perfectly down with authoritarian, even racist theocratic rule, as long as they’re not the ones with leopards eating their faces. The USA has always had an especially large chunk of the population like that, they were just been a bit quieter for a generation.
Rob, it’s easy to get people to back the authoritarian by setting up a culture that constantly believes that its freedom is under threat and needs a military and guns to protect it. Here in the States, all of our culture is built around adoring the military, thanking everyone for their service, etc. This week leading up to Memorial Day, all of the baseball teams in the pros are wearing camouflage caps to honor the vets.
Our freedoms are what we talk about when funding the military, but nobody has attacked the United States militarily for 80 years. And that was a strike on us for territorial and economic reasons, not because someone wanted to take away our right to assemble peaceably.
I don’t hate the vets, and i appreciate the sacrifices that they and their families have made.
We are conditioned to look outside the US for the enemies of Freedom, which allows the authoritarians to actually, in real life, tell us that the sacrifices for freedom require a Strong Leader. And the idea of a Strong Leader to my mind does not fit well with a functioning democracy. It functions better to support that leader in a Time of War and not criticize him (because it’s always been a male.) It functions better to paint the libs as the ones who are trying to weaken the country, and while blaming the libs for all the cancelling and stuff to ignore all the cancelling and stuff that the right does in service to the Strong Leader that was robbed of his proper place by the libs.
I’m pretty sure that the only interest that Christopher Rufo and Tucker Carlson have in the trans issue is that it helps to weaken the opposition to Trumpism.
Can’t let that happen again. Must repress the wrong votes in order to enable the right votes and bring back the Strong Leader. It’s all in service to the Greater Good and Freedom.
Only True Patriots should be speaking and only True Patriots should be voting.