Why The GA GOP Keeps Sending Crazy People to Congress

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 3^rd 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 2^nd place while Greene road the endorsement of Trump to 1^st 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 14^th 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.