Georgia’s anti-Trump “Republican” Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan yesterday announced he will not
seek reelection in 2022, chickening out of what was expected to be a bruising primary campaign due to his criticism of former President Trump.
Duncan isn’t the only Georgia Republican to face Trump’s wrath reported The Hill. The former president has also pledged to oppose Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both of whom refused to conduct any kind of serious inquiry into the voting irregularities documented to have occurred on their watch.
In a statement reported by The Hill, Duncan addressed the alleged tension within the GOP, describing the party as being at a crossroads in the wake of Trump’s presidency. He said that he would not seek reelection next year and would instead focus on “healing and rebuilding a Republican Party that is damaged but not destroyed.”
Duncan’s effort to “heal and rebuild” the Republican Party will be done through an organization called GOP 2.0.
According to an interview Duncan gave to AJC.com reporter Greg Bluestein, GOP 2.0 believes, “There’s two choices — the crowd that’s trying to ignore it and the crowd that’s trying to fix it — and I would consider myself front and center in the crowd that’s trying to fix it. And for me, it’s about trying to build a movement that allows us to remind millions of Americans of the conservative policies that got us here. Why Republicans are best to be in charge of the economy, of public safety of national security.”
Duncan went on to tell Bluestein, “For me, Donald Trump validated that an outsider, business-minded change agent can be effective in D.C. But in order to win, we’ve got to be focused on policies that make sense to a majority of Americans, we’ve got to be more empathetic and we’ve got to do it with a better tone. And that’s going to be a cornerstone of GOP 2.0.”
Duncan’s statement and comments to Mr. Bluestein remind us for all the world of former Vice President and President George H.W. Bush’s idea of a “kinder and gentler” GOP than the one President Ronald Reagan led to a 49-state victory over the Democrats – and we all know how that turned-out.
Bush destroyed the Reagan coalition and squandered his own post Desert Storm popularity by breaking his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge and pandering to establishment interests on expanding government regulations among many other failures brought on by his almost genetic impulse to cave to Democrats.
However, Duncan’s statement IS an interesting window into the delusional minds of the miniscule anti-Trump crowd that constantly generates lots of establishment news coverage, but few votes: “There’s millions of Americans that would have probably voted for a Republican on the top of the ticket if a better tone had been used — if we had a tone that encouraged them rather than a condescending tone.”
Encourage Americans who didn’t like Trump’s tone to do what?
Perhaps vote for higher gas prices, war in the Middle East, open borders, a massive influx of illegal aliens and legal immigrants and a rate of inflation that is spiraling out of control, critical race theory in their schools and workplaces and a government that is antagonistic to and trying to undermine the Constitution that created it, because that’s what they voted for if Duncan believes the election wasn’t stolen.
What Duncan, and the rest of the GOP 2.0 crowd, such as Liz Cheney, don’t seem to understand is that a political party belongs to the voters who support it – not to self-appointed “leaders” like Geoff Duncan – and its policies and platform come from the bottom up not the top down.
We predict Geoff Duncan and GOP 2.0 are going to be complete failures because what they are proposing is not a reinvention of the GOP as the political home of America’s limited government constitutional conservative voters, but a return to power of the leaders whose failed leadership created the environment for Donald Trump’s primary victory and the rise of the MAGA Movement.
If Geoff Duncan, Liz Cheney and the rest of the anti-Trump crowd really want to create a GOP 2.0, they should get out there and campaign on a GOP 2.0 platform and see if the voters buy it. But we predict they are not going to do that – and Geoff Duncan walking away from the Georgia 2022 primary is the best evidence we are right – because they know their brand of Republicanism is what voters already rejected during the 2016 primaries that brought the MAGA Movement to life and continue to sustain it as the dominant center of the Republican electorate.
2020 Election
Georgia recount
Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan
Georgia Republican Party
Donald Trump
Gov. Brian Kemp
GOP 2.0
GOP establishment
MAGA Agenda
Liz Cheney
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger