Conventions are supposed to be kumbayah moments in the life of a political party, with loyalists and officials joining together to mock the opposing party, trot out party shibboleths and indulge in “what-happens-in-Vegas-stays-in-Vegas” behavior.
In some ways, last weekend’s state GOP convention in Columbus didn’t break the mold.
To gales of laughter and boos, Democrats were accused of all manner of evil, epitomized by the “Biden crime family,” Communist China, and women wanting to be men, or vice versa.
Attendees and speakers touted the GOP as the party of moral rectitude, good economic sense, and more patriotism. And gossip about alleged high-jinx at a convention-eve cigar party in the nearby Marriott hadn’t subsided two days later.
Fulfilling the obligations set forth in his job description, Josh McKoon, the former state senator and newly elected chairman of the state GOP, preached party unity.
“There’s a lot of interest in trying to come together for the common purpose of electing a Republican president,” McKoon told The Current before his election on Saturday.
“I, frankly, am very confident that after this weekend we’re going to see a coming together between the party apparatus and our statewide elected officials,” he said.
Perhaps.
Elephants in the room
Yet for all their confidence about smooth sailing ahead for Georgia’s Republicans, McKoon and other party officials couldn’t hide the elephants in the room.
One of those unacknowledged problems, of course, concerned David Shafer, the outgoing chairman.
As he stepped down after two terms in the post to await a possible indictment from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on charges of illegally interfering in the 2020 elections, Shafer made no effort to mend fences with Georgia Republicans beyond the convention hall who don’t share his embrace of Trump.
Indeed, his invitations to Trump, the master disrupter, and former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, to speak at the convention in Columbus were the opposite of conciliatory, as their fiery speeches both demonstrated.
“If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me,” Lake told conventioneers at a Friday evening banquet.
“And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA. That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement,” said the former television news anchor, who continues to claim that the 2020 presidential election and her governor’s race last year were stolen.
Direct competition
The other unpleasantness looming in the convention hall was the glaring absence of Georgia’s top Republican, Gov. Brian Kemp, and his top allies.
Most of the Republicans gathered in Columbus attributed Kemp’s absence to his natural desire to avoid being jeered by members of his own party, in a repeat of the GOP convention on Jekyll Island in 2021, when he was booed and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was censured for their failures to help Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Kemp’s keenness to avoid a similarly embarrassing scene at this year’s convention could simply be ascribed to personal and political distaste for the former president, were it not for the fact that the governor’s antipathy for all things Trump has fueled his building of a parallel party structure that will, he says, support conservative candidates in next year’s primaries.
That endeavor puts him and his political action committees in direct competition with the state GOP and other organizations that use the Republican name and logo for the tens of millions of donor dollars expected to be in play next year, warned James Abely, a Republican lawyer in St. Simons.
“I think there’s a similarity of names among Republican groups in the state that could confuse donors,” Abely warned.
A ‘true’ Republican?
It also raises the specter of a battle in the run-up to next year’s primaries pitting the state GOP, Kemp’s fledgling campaign apparatus, and Republican-affiliated groups against each other over endorsements and in arguments over who is — or is not — a “true” Republican or conservative.
In his comments to The Current, McKoon acknowledged that the make-up of the Republican Party in Georgia doesn’t reflect the state’s ethnic and racial diversity but said he believed the GOP will “make inroads with Black and Hispanic voters” in the next two years.
But the ferment roiling the party suggests that politics and ideology could nudge aside race and ethnicity at the heart of the debate over whether and how the state GOP can be a “big tent.”
A resolution put forward at the convention by the Georgia Republican Assembly would allow the state convention to ban people from running on the Republican ballot if they posed a threat to betray the party’s principles.
The so-called “Accountability Rule” would “protect the Republican brand by ensuring socialists and communists don’t run as Republicans and then enact policies that destroy our country and ruin our brand,” and impose a term-limit on incumbents “whose bad behavior proves they no longer represent the principles of the Republican Party,” according to a draft of the resolution distributed by the GRA.
After a contentious debate, a convention committee ordered a year-long study of the proposed “Accountability Rule,” effectively kicking the can down the road.
MTG in Coastal Georgia?
Still, the party’s firebrands who welcome such litmus tests are setting tone for next year’s elections.
Look no further than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Rome).
Trump took the unusual step of bringing Greene to the podium during his speech, a gesture that added wattage to the star power she enjoys in the party’s grassroots.
That star power could be on display soon in Coastal Georgia.
Kandiss Taylor, chair of the 1st District GOP, told The Current she’s hoping to bring Greene to Coastal Georgia for an appearance in the near future.
