Source: Politics<\/p>\n
MARIETTA, Ga. \u2014 Nowhere has the post-Trump era been more painful for the Republican Party than in Georgia, where Trump loyalists\u2019 war on Republican elected officials is still raging, at great cost.<\/p>\n
After the presidential election, lost by Republicans in Georgia for the first time since 1992, the party crumpled in the January Senate runoffs. In the Atlanta suburbs, once a citadel of conservatism, Republicans were blown out.<\/p>\n
Yet if that was cause for any introspection, it was not readily apparent as Republicans gathered at county conventions in recent days to chart their course for the midterm elections and the next presidential race in 2024.<\/p>\n
In Cobb County, the archetype of the GOP\u2019s suburban erosion, Republican activists over the weekend were still relitigating former President Donald Trump\u2019s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud while drafting resolutions to rebuke the state\u2019s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and other Republican officials for their unwillingness to overturn Trump\u2019s loss. The Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has been all but excommunicated<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n The once dominant Georgia GOP might be in meltdown in the suburbs, but the rank and file remains obsessed with Trump and the perceived wrongs of the last election.<\/p>\n As party activists vented at their county convention, the chair of the Cobb County Young Republicans, DeAnna Harris, stewed in the parking lot of her local party office.<\/p>\n \u201cHuge mistake,\u201d she said of the hostilities directed at Kemp and the reliving of 2020. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to get out of this mindset. It\u2019s almost like insanity.\u201d<\/p>\n To traditionalist Republicans in Georgia, the infighting between fervent Trump supporters and the establishment wing of the party has become increasingly alarming as the midterm elections come into focus. The GOP is desperate to regain its footing in the suburbs after Trump\u2019s collapse there. But it was moderate Republicans and independent voters, not Trump loyalists, who abandoned Trump in November, and the party\u2019s fixation on the former president may only alienate them further, with potentially disastrous consequences for 2022 and beyond.<\/p>\n Party officials remain optimistic that since the midterms historically favor the out-of-power party, state Republicans \u201cshould be poised to have a very good year,\u201d said Randy Evans, a Georgia lawyer who served as Trump\u2019s ambassador to Luxembourg.<\/p>\n Yet there are plenty of reasons to question whether historic trends will swing in their direction.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m convinced that if infighting escalates, we could easily blow it, as well,\u201d Evans said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to figure out how to come together, really. And it\u2019s an easy thing to say but a very difficult thing to actually do in this environment\u2026 The consultants and the insiders will undoubtedly attempt to shift the focus toward a message that we can all agree, like we\u2019re not Biden-Harris, and so let\u2019s just focus on that. But I think some of these divisions are so deep that I don\u2019t know that that\u2019s enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Making gains in the midterms is hard, he said, \u201cif you\u2019re shooting at each other inside the tent.\u201d<\/p>\n Even before Trump lost the nation\u2019s suburbs<\/u><\/a> to Joe Biden, Republicans were facing a crisis in suburbia, the result of shifting demographics and voting habits around America\u2019s largest cities. In Atlanta\u2019s diversifying suburbs, what had once been a gradual \u201cmetamorphosis\u201d was \u201cput on steroids by Donald Trump,\u201d said John Watson, a former Georgia Republican Party chair.<\/p>\n Mitt Romney had carried Cobb County by nearly 13 percentage points<\/u><\/a> in 2012. Four years later, Trump lost the county to Hillary Clinton by about 2 points<\/u><\/a>, and four years after that, he was clobbered by more than 14<\/u><\/a> percentage points. Over the span of eight years, it marked a 27-point swing against the Republican nominee.<\/p>\n The predicament for Republicans is that while many suburban voters, especially women, recoiled from Trump, he dramatically expanded the party elsewhere, pulling more working-class whites into the GOP and making inroads with Latinos<\/u><\/a>. Now, for Republican Party organizers, the question hanging over the midterm elections is how to hold on to Trump\u2019s base while recovering the moderate voters he lost to now-President Biden in November.<\/p>\n In Cobb County, the party\u2019s election of a new county chair on Saturday offered a glimpse of the difficult path forward. A three-way race for an open seat, the contest featured one woman, of Puerto Rican descent, who invoked the \u201cimage problem\u201d confronting the overwhelmingly white convention attendees in a county where people of color now make up nearly half<\/u><\/a> of the population. Another candidate presented herself as an analytics expert. The third, Salleigh Grubbs, ran on a \u201cCobb First,\u201d \u201cAmerica First\u201d platform.<\/p>\n One supporter referred to Grubbs, a businesswoman, as \u201cthe female version of Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n The result wasn\u2019t even close \u2014 Grubbs won in a landslide.<\/p>\n Shaking his head at the back of the room when the outcome became apparent, Shelley Wynter, a conservative talk show host in Atlanta, said, \u201cIt\u2019s going to hurt the party. We don\u2019t need a bomb thrower. We need diplomats and ambassadors.\u201d<\/p>\n He said, \u201cIt\u2019s hard to go into east Cobb County and talk to suburban voters with a MAGA hat on.\u201d<\/p>\n In Georgia and elsewhere, there have been some positive signs for the GOP in the suburbs. Despite Trump\u2019s loss, Republicans performed well down-ballot in November<\/u><\/a>, both nationally and in Georgia<\/u><\/a>. Scores of traditionally Republican voters split their tickets, elevating Biden while propelling Republicans to victories in congressional and state legislative races.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a mistake to assume that suburban voters are somehow locked into the Democratic column,\u201d said Whit Ayres, the longtime Republican pollster. \u201cThey are very much up for grabs not just in Georgia, but around the country.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Ayers said, the focus of party activists on exacting a measure of payback on the party\u2019s own statewide elected officials is \u201cdoing the exact opposite of what\u2019s necessary to revive the Republican Party in the suburbs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPicking a fight with your own party\u2019s governor and lieutenant governor and secretary of state,\u201d he said, \u201cdoesn\u2019t strike me as the wisest of political moves.\u201d<\/p>\n Following the weekend conventions, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported<\/u><\/a> that most local Republican parties declined to rebuke Kemp, with expressions of anger largely coming from rural, heavily conservative swaths of the state. In Gwinnett County \u2014 another populous, once-Republican Atlanta suburb \u2014 resolutions to censure Kemp and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and to encourage Raffensperger to resign were rejected<\/u><\/a>. But in Cobb County, resolutions rebuking Kemp and other officials were merely put off because of a time limitation, officials said. They are expected to be taken up by county party officials at a later meeting.<\/p>\n \u201cThe anger with respect to the fraudulent vote is extreme, and I think many voters do not think our elected officials did the job,\u201d said Leroy Emkin, a member of the Cobb County Republican Party\u2019s resolutions committee.<\/p>\n The party, he said, has an obligation to put its politicians \u201con notice\u201d regardless of the political ramifications.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a matter of truth, of the Constitution,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Emkin is not in the minority. Most Republicans here believe that the last election was not free and fair<\/u><\/a>. And it\u2019s in part due to frustration over the outcome of that election, coupled with the reality of a Democratic-controlled Washington, that Georgia Republicans credited large crowds at their events this past weekend. The gathering in Cobb County, which drew several hundred delegates, was more than double the size of some previous years, said Jason Shepherd, the party chair before Grubbs was elected.<\/p>\n It was the same at county party meetings across the state. Jason Thompson, a Republican national committeeman from Georgia, said the GOP \u201cis energized more than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot everyone agrees on everything,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I can assure you that what we do agree upon is that what President Biden is pushing and the Democrats in Congress \u2026 is just beyond the pale.\u201d<\/p>\n