I will never forget my first ever Georgia Republican convention. I was so excited to be an official delegate with all the voting rights and privileges. It was such an honor to be part of the process of selecting candidates and starting someone off on his/her career in the legislature who might one day be Governor or maybe even President!
I was a moron. Here’s the dirty little secret about the GA GOP: all the party membership decides is party leadership, convention delegates and meaningless resolutions that have no power whatsoever. That’s it. Hours locked in a windowless convention hall without benefit of alcohol listening to boring campaign speeches and arguments over Roberts Rules of Order to decide who will be 3rd Vice Chair of Obscurity. And if the last four years have taught us anything, it’s that the purpose of a political party is to get that party’s candidates elected. Period. Even if said candidates are mentally or morally unfit to be running a 7/11, much less the country.
Which brings us to Marjorie Taylor Greene. Sane people throughout the country are now asking “How does a nutcase like this get elected to Congress? Why didn’t the party stop her?” Short answer: they can’t. Other state parties have different rules, but here in Georgia, all you have to do to run in the Republican primary is 1. Meet the legal requirements to run for the office. (For Congress, that means the candidate must be 25 years old, be an American citizen for at least 7 years, and live in the state they represent. You don’t actually have to live in the DISTRICT you represent. Just the state of Georgia.) 2. Sign the Republican pledge. And 3. Write a check to the Republican party.
In other words, if someone will just cut me a check for $5220, I can challenge Marjorie Taylor Greene in next year’s primary. I won’t even have to sell my house.
You can see where this leads to problems. The party not only has no means of keeping any candidate off the ballot, but also has no incentive to. After all, if 500 crazy people with zero chance of winning want to run on the Republican ticket, the party gets to keep all that money. Furthermore, the state party has a rule against meddling in primaries. Could that rule be changed? Yes. By the aforementioned state convention delegates. Rumor is that such a change will be proposed this year but is unlikely to pass. Most Republicans would rather take their chances with the crazies than allow a bunch of insiders to block ballot access over their petty personal grievances.
But Greene didn’t get elected because there weren’t any acceptable alternatives. In an eerie repeat of the 2016 presidential primary, a bunch of Republicans spent the whole time attacking each other for 2nd place while Greene road the endorsement of Trump to 1st place. The candidate who faced off against her in the runoff, neurosurgeon John Cowan places the blame on the “Freedom caucus” for her win. Party leadership can’t officially endorse a candidate, but an outside alliance like the Congressional Republicans is free to do as it likes. And the Freedom Caucus was all in for Greene! Her willingness to “fight” (in other words “Say the most outrageous statements possible and refuse to back down from them) and undying fealty to Trump made her an asset. They either didn’t bother to do further research on her, or they didn’t care. And that endorsement carried a lot of weight in her district, according to Cowan.
My own illustrious Congressman Jody Hice initially endorsed Greene, then rescinded his endorsement when the crazy leaked out. Yet, there she was standing by his side, nodding like a bobblehead when he stood on the floor of the Senate to demand overturn of Georgia’s electoral votes. Bygones, I guess.
So, how DO we keep sending crazy people to Congress? In addition to the complete lack of gatekeeping over the process, there are 2 other major contributing factors: the primary system and gerrymandering. On a good year, only about 20% of Georgia voters participate in the primary process. That allows the extremists on both sides to control the results. And gerrymandering all but guarantees that one party is certain to win. Republicans could run a dead horse and win Georgia’s 14th Congressional district.
If the voters of Greene’s district want to get rid of her, their only option is to convince Democratic voters to cross over and vote against her in the primary. The good news for them is that Georgia is an open primary state. We don’t register by party so they won’t have to change their voter registration. So, pick your poison: forfeit your vote on all the other state and local primary races next year or take your chances on 2 more years (at least) of crazy. Your choice. That’s how Republicans in my old district finally got rid of Cynthia McKinney back in the day. And yes, I think it’s terrible that our crappy primary system combined with gerrymandering forces Americans to choose between having a say in state/local elections or national ones. We should all have a voice, regardless of party affiliation. But that’s a different rant for a different day.
Of course, there’s always the hope Republicans will recruit a solid candidate and rally their own voters to send Congresswoman Greene packing. I just wouldn’t put money on it based on their recent behavior.
There is a possible third way to remove MTG from congress. Should Georgia gain or lose a seat in the house due to the 2020 census, she could be forced to run against another sitting congress critter. However, I am not familiar enough with how GA’s population has changed since 2010 to be able to say if this is probable.Report
All of the reapportionment projects I’ve seen keep Georgia at the same number of House seats. However, the districts are likely to be at least somewhat different to allow for the relative population shift towards the Atlanta metro and away from the rest of the state.Report
Never underestimate the ability of sitting politicians to game any potential change to their advantage.Report
This is in my wheelhouse since I do redistricting analysis. I can say with certainty that if even if they keep the same house seats, they can “carve” up Greene’s district to make her reelection more difficult, but far from guaranteeing a turnoverReport
I don’t understand this theory.
You think Republicans should carve up the district to make electing Republicans harder?
That seems unlikely for them to do, to put it mildly.
On top of that, her district isn’t actually gerrymandered. Not really. It’s the entire northwest corner of Georgia. the 11th district is a little carved out from it, but the 11th district is Republican too!Report
You could, normally redraw a map and put two Congressmen against each other in a primary. But if GA doesn’t require district residency, I don’t think that’d work. You could take the majority of her current district (the 14th) and call it the 13th, so she wouldn’t be an incumbent in the 14th any more, but then she could just run in the new 13th.Report
Word has it the state legislature is working on that. But she moved to run last time. She wouldn’t hesitate to move again to stay in the district.Report
Here in Colorado (home of Rep. Boebert, CO-3), we are very likely to get an eighth House seat. The legislature has taken itself out of the last two redistrictings: split control, no compromise, and the state supreme court that drew the lines didn’t want to do anything controversial. This time we have a redistricting commission. At least as I read the population changes and the general mood, the commission won’t do more than tweak around the edges of the 3rd. The excitement will be how the commission decides to split up the Front Range to have six districts rather than five.Report
Well it sounds like the citizens of Georgia need to do the work to change the procedures for elected officials.
Yeah, I don’t see that happening. But hey, MERRIE, why don’t you take up that baton?Report
Unfortunately this is a situation where we really need some direct democracy/ballot initiatives to change the practices. Since SCOTUS has said the federal courts won’t get involved and state legislatures have no incentive to reign themselves in that’s the only path forward.Report
Why does the Republican Party continue to produce crazy hateful elected officials?
One theory- and hear me out here- is that the voting base of the Republican Party eagerly selects and elevates the most crazy and hateful person of their number to represent them.Report
Which surprises no one who has been watching them for 40 years.Report
Exactly.
The elected Republicans may not themselves be crazy, but their constituents most certainly are.Report
Should someone who knows how to do this set up a crowdfunding mechanism so Merrie can primary Greene in 2022?Report
I’m sure there will be no shortage of people willing to primary her next year. And you’d need a big ole’ truckload of money to run for Congress.Report
Related:
Greene apologizes to GOP colleagues — and gets standing ovation
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/537263-greene-apologizes-to-gop-colleagues-and-gets-standing-ovation
She is not going anywhere.Report
And yet those same republicans – in a secret ballot – kept Liz Cheney in her leadership spot.Report
Joining Chip on this. The Georgia GOP keep nominating and sending crazy people to Congress because that is who Republican primary voters to represent them in Congress. The Republicans have used the paranoid vote as a way to win elections since 1964. After 2008, the elite Republicans lost total control and the Republicans have become the party of far right white supremacy since then. Even in states where going Far Right caused the Republican party to effectively collapse like California or Oregon, the remaining Republicans stay the course because that is what they really believe.Report
Greene stripped of committee assignments in 230-199 vote. 11 Republicans break ranks to vote with the Democrats.Report
I think this is a bad move by Democrats. A vote to censure would make the same point without their having reached into internal GOP business. If Repubicans retake the House in ’22 Omar, Tlaib, AOC, all are going to have similar actions taken against them.Report
I watched a cop wrestle a deranged and violent transient to the ground and put him in cuffs.
This was a really bad move on their part, because when the violent and deranged transients take over, they will just do the same to the rest of us.
And won’t we be sorry then!Report
Well, if you’re cool with a bunch of Dems getting their committee assignments stripped in 2 years, Chip, celebrate good times!Report
The Republican Party is increasingly deranged and anti-democratic. We can’t push this under the rug forever. We are eventually going to have to confront some major domestic issues in the United States if we want to save our democracy.Report
“Look, the socialist Dems are increasingly deranged. We can’t just keep pushing this under the rug. That’s why today I’m introducing a resolution to strip the following eight democrats of their committee assignments.”Report
About half of the Republican Congressional caucus would be perfectly content to see their Democratic colleagues gunned down in cold blood.
The other half would furrow their brow and draft a sternly worded tweet.
So yeah.Report
Not sure how stripping Greene of her committees is gonna make the threat of Dems being gunned down lower…Report
Your side opened this up when you started talking about expelling Trump supporters from Congress like two weeks ago. Does anyone remember two weeks ago? You bought this shotgun, brought it home, put it on the porch, and threatened your neighbors with it two weeks ago. Then you used it, and you’re complaining that someone might use it against you? Let me guess – “unprecedentedly”, right?Report
Well, its nice to see that “insurrectionists who violently attempted to overthrow a free election” is now honestly recast as “Trump supporters”.Report
It’s a rare bit of honesty, actually.Report
If only the Democratic Party and their voters would just eternally agree that America must always be ruled by Trumpism we wouldn’t have this problem. (Sarcasm).Report
I wasn’t talking about expelling the rioters from the Capitol, I was talking about expelling people like Cruz and Hawley from their seats.Report
Yes so was I.Report
For clarity: are you saying that “people like Cruz and Hawley” are “insurrectionists who violently attempted to overthrow a free election”?Report
Yep.Report
OK, from now on, when you use words completely differently than anyone else ever has, could you mention it?Report
He’s using the words in ways I would expect him to use them. He’s using them the way I use them. He’s just not using them the way you WANT him to use them.Report
You think Cruz was violent? You would call Cruz’s actions violent if they were done by someone other than Cruz?Report
I think Cruz is an insurrectionist who aided and abetted people trying to violently overthrow the outcome of a free and fair election. Hawley too.
Unfortunately for you there’s no example of similar from “the other side.” So your attempt at “whataboutism” falls flat.Report
I didn’t make a whataboutist argument. I asked for clarification of something that sounded nonsensical to me, and you confirmed that that’s what you meant. You’ll notice that my first comment in this thread wasn’t that Democrats do it too, but that only Democrats threaten to do it then do it then worry that it might be done to them someday.
It’d be a lot easier to accept your position if I thought you were following the argument. I can accept Chip because I believe him to be candid if horribly mistaken.Report
Then this was aimed at whom, exactly?
Because from the cheap seats it looks like its aimed at democrats.Report
Thanks for the input Pinky!Report
And thank you for saying I’m rarely honest. XOXOReport
I disagree. Greene would have been an easy symbolic choice to the GOP to dispose of in order to show the inmates are not in control of the asylum. They could not bring themselves to do that. Bending over and coddling fascists only enables it.Report
At this point I think the best thing the Democrats could do is learn from those who live with abusive spouses or addicts.
We need to surrender the idea that we can somehow “fix” them or curb their behavior by scolding them, or bargaining with them, or trying to outsmart them.
The abuser will always have an excuse no matter how well you cook the pot roast, the drunk will always find the bottle you hid and the junkie’s hunger won’t ever be sated by a good scolding.
When a party has “Make liberals cry” as its operative slogan, the only thing we can do to satisfy them is to flinch and curl up to cry.
And I’m hoping the Democrats aren’t willing to do that anymore.Report
The problem with the abusive partner comparison is that leaving an abusive partner is relatively easy, and I realize that it isn’t easy at all, compared to dealing hundreds of completely out there politicians representing the real views of millions of your fellow citizens.Report
They could, however, bring themselves to support Liz Cheney against those same forces so long as they were off the record in a secret ballot. It tells you a lot about their courage and their cowardice – it also tells you how to get Republican Senators to vote to convict at the impeachment.Report
I forgot to ask, who are the other crazies you keep sending to Congress?Report
Well, there’s Doug Collins, Jody Hice, and the Democrats have Hank Johnson. So it’s really a bipartisan problem.Report
Well, they also had McKinney, who I’d forgotten about, who denied the results of the presidential election, and there’s Abrams, who denied the results of *her* election. What did Colins and Hice do other than deny the results of the presidential election?Report
I used to live in McKinney’s district. It took an organized plot by Republicans crossing over to get rid of her – and replace her with Hank. Not sure it was worth the effort.
Hice is my current Congressman. He took that scumbag Todd Starnes as his “date” to the SOTU speech. And of course he attempted to overturn the state’s electoral votes.
Collins is a big reason Republicans lost 2 Senate seats. His bruised little ego wouldn’t just let Loeffler have it, he had to run against her. The 2 of them spent the better part of a year fighting over who would sexually gratify Trump the hardest. And now we have Raphael Warnock as Senator.Report
Now with Collins gone his district is represented by the guy whose biggest claim to fame is he fought the IRS and won… oh and he had an AR-15 on his campaign sign.
I’m mostly holding judgement to see if he actually does something with himself or if he keeps posting pro-Trump BS to appease the masses. I’ve posted on his page multiple times if he continues to focus on stuff like bringing broadband to his rural district he’ll do okay. But if he sells his soul like Collins did…. At least Trump is no longer in office so they can’t physically insert themselves up his ass anymore.Report
Considering that Loeffler _lost_, that seems a weird interpretation of events.
Or is the theory that Loeffler had to move to the far-right to fend off Collins, and that cost her the election? But…Collins did the same thing. He would have moved left for the general to some extent. The problem there is merely having a primary like they had, having to out-Trump each other.
Honestly, my interpretation of that election that the problem was actually Loeffler, who is a carpetbagger who had never won an election in Georgia, or held any public office, and was married to the head of the stock exchange. Forced on Georgia by Trump…which, yes, Georgia liked Trump (Well, apparently not!), but…not enough to let him pick our Congresmen!
Kemp took a _lot_ of heat for appointing her over an actual Georgia politician, simply because Trump wanted it, when it was clearly Collins ‘turn’ to be Senator…he’d been a Representative for four terms, and basically had set his sights on being a Senator the entire time, with a nice ‘fairly conservative but not insane or stupid’ reputation.
I mean, he was _my_ Representative in Congress, and…I disagreed with literally everything he did, but he was not a crazy person.
Or, at least, he wasn’t until he decided to firmly attach himself to Trump. (Which is not really crazy, but more cynical.)
I don’t like the guy, but I’m failing to see any level of craziness that distinguishes him from [random Republican Congressman].Report
Stacy Abrams holds no elected office in Georgia at the moment.Report
It’s always funny when people get Republican talking points wrong. The talking point is supposed to be that Stacey Abrams did not ‘concede’. Not that she ‘denied the results of her election’, because she didn’t. She very clearly didn’t deny them. Here’s her exact words:
That is her accepting the results of the election, aka, that Brian Kemp will be governor. That’s ten days after the election, one day after the recount ended.
Now, she, in the same speech, said her speech wasn’t a concession, thus giving the Republicans their talking point that she ‘didn’t concede’. (The ones who get that talking point right).
But that speech actually is a concession. She’s refusing to call it one using that word, and saying she will still fight, except she makes it clear the fight she is going to do is file a lawsuit _that will not challenge this election outcome_, but rather how voting works in general. (A lawsuit that is still active and her side was doing faily well until Covid froze it.) So, in a metaphorical sense, she’s not conceeding…while literally conceeding. Feel free to attack her for speaking gibberish and redefining words, but she did actually concede right there.
But it doesn’t really matter if people step forward and concede or not, it doesn’t matter if they say nothing. There are plenty of people who lose elections and just walk off into the sunset, and that’s fine.
The thing we really require of losers is for them to stop holding the election out as undecided when it has been decided. When it is clear they cannot win, it’s _nice_ if they concede, but at minimum they have to stop asserting they can still win.
Which Abrams did. And Trump didn’t. For months.
Even after the point that he had officially lost…yes, the Presidental election is convoluted, but the electoral college voting December 14th was a fairly definitive end. (And only then because the electors could, technically, defect.) Considering no state legislature had appointed competing slates of electors, which they would have had to do before the EC vote on the 14th, and thus no other electorial votes could be considered as valid by Congress, it seems hard to even _conceive_ of any legal pathway by which Trump might win after that. Even if, on December 15th, we had suddenly discovered that every single Biden vote that had been cast in the election was fake, a deliberate giant all-encompassing fraud…at that point the process could not be stopped via any obvious legal or constitutional remedy.
But Trump kept lying for another month.
Also…brush up on your talking points a bit. You totally flubbed this one.Report
Say what you will about MTG, she didn’t talk of using nukes against american gun owners, like that crazy Dem from California.Report
I don’t know who you’re talking about, but when the bar is below ground it’s pretty easy to hop over.Report
“Now we’re just haggling over the price.”Report
He’s talking about this – https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/eric-swalwell-gun-owners-nukes/
Which seems to be as clear a case of whataboutism as I can find today.Report