Stacey Abrams Would Have Been Better for Georgia than Brian Kemp

Last week, on social media, I field­ed the fol­low­ing ques­tion from a vet­er­an Geor­gia Repub­li­can House mem­ber prepar­ing to par­tic­i­pate in the 2024 Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly. Con­cern­ing my recent Sub­stack enti­tled,How to Build a Police State While No One Notices,he wrote,

Ques­tion? So you think Stacey would have done a bet­ter job? I do see some of what you say. Even more than I like . How­ev­er I have said this over and over If you do not VOTE !!!! Because of what­ev­er you believe. Then I cant help Stu­pid!!! With the men­tal health yes I see much to be con­cerned about . The same non­sense with Hate Crimes. I do believe you are very smart and you are con­cerned as I am. You know me and I have always been respect­ful but I am tired of The Biden admin­is­tra­tion! I am also tired of peo­ple who say they are Repub­li­cans and Con­ser­v­a­tives when they are not. How­ev­er I am also fed up with peo­ple that NO ONE can please. Mer­ry Christ­mas. Some­times we all have to agree to dis­agree.

Agree to dis­agree, I hear that a lot, main­ly from indi­vid­u­als who run out of argu­ments and find them­selves vul­ner­a­ble in the weak posi­tions they take. Now, of course, there would be issues on which I can agree to dis­agree, sure. I mean, what should be the legal weight lim­it on Geor­gia high­ways for vehi­cles haul­ing this or that? There is room for dis­agree­ment there. Maybe one indus­try ought to have a high­er weight lim­it than anoth­er based onwhat­ev­er. And I can live with any politi­cian with whom I have an objec­tive, dif­fer­ing opin­ion on poli­cies such as I describe. But my friend asked a wor­thy ques­tion, one that has been rolling around in my head for awhile, whether Stacey Abrams would have done a bet­ter job as gov­er­nor than Bri­an Kemp.

Im not going to walk away from ques­tions like that. I am glad to receive them. And I wont just leave the ques­tion­er say­ing well have to agree to dis­agree. I am going to answer the ques­tion ful­ly, tak­ing the adverse posi­tion thatGeor­gia and Amer­i­ca would have been bet­ter off with Stacey Abrams as gov­er­nor rather than Bri­an Kemp, and explain why. With­out dis­clos­ing his name, here is the answer I gave this Geor­gia Repub­li­can Rep­re­sen­ta­tive:

That is a quite an excel­lent ques­tion, ________, whether Stacey Abrams would have done a bet­ter job. In fact, I will like­ly write on that ques­tion as a first order after the New Year, as that thought has already occurred to me. How­ev­er, I will ask the ques­tion a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly, and that is to deter­mine whether, giv­en a Repub­li­can House and Sen­ate, a Gov­er­nor Stacey Abrams would have doneless harmto our state and coun­try than Bri­an Kemp. And my answer would be a resound­ing YES. Giv­en a Repub­li­can House and Sen­ate there is no doubt Stacey Abrams would have done less harm. That is large­ly because there would have been an adver­sar­i­al rela­tion­ship between the leg­isla­tive branch and the gov­er­nor’s office, a con­di­tion which would have allowed much less harm, been much less divi­sive to the Repub­li­can Par­ty, and placed Geor­gia Repub­li­cans in a much bet­ter place to win in 2024 than it is today.

How can I say that?

First of all, there is no way on God’s green earth that you and the rest of the Repub­li­cans in the House and Sen­ate, save an extreme­ly small minor­i­ty, would have vot­ed for SB221 in 2021, hand­ing the Gov­er­nor unlim­it­ed means to solic­it and receive funds inside of a pri­vate “Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee,” a cor­po­rate orga­ni­za­tion empow­ered to receiveunlim­it­ed con­tri­bu­tionsfrom not only indi­vid­u­als, but alsocor­po­ra­tionsandLLC’s, who’s own­ers and mem­bers areuniden­ti­fi­able, the funds of which can’t even be cer­ti­fied as orig­i­nat­ing from with­in this coun­try, much less the State of Geor­gia.

Thus, there is no way Bri­an Kemp would have been able to raise almost $80 mil­lion dol­lars for his 2022 cam­paign, out­side of his own offi­cial cam­paign, and out­side of the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty prop­er, to in essence become a king-mak­er, or rain-mak­er for Repub­li­can politi­cians seek­ing office in state gov­ern­ment, or to become a force­ful adver­sary against those same aspir­ing Repub­li­can politi­cians, fear­ful that the gov­er­nor may fund a can­di­date to run against them, or pri­ma­ry an incum­bent, even your­self, who choos­es to dis­agree with the gov­er­nor on impor­tant pol­i­cy. That one bill, WHICH YOU VOTED FOR, ______, has made a mock­ery of the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty, Kemp inform­ing his Geor­gia First Lead­er­ship Com­mit­tee last Feb­ru­ary,“We can no longer rely on the tra­di­tion­al par­ty infra­struc­ture to win in the future.That one bill, again, WHICH YOU VOTED FOR, has vir­tu­al­ly destroyed the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty and replaced it with a pri­vate cor­po­rate receiv­er run by the Gov­er­nor of Geor­gia. That gov­er­nor is estab­lish­ing“Repub­li­can Coali­tion Cor­po­ra­tions“in coun­ty after coun­ty all over this state, fur­ther dimin­ish­ing any voice deriv­ing from the actu­al will of the peo­ple com­pris­ing thefor­merRepub­li­can Par­ty of Geor­gia.

Now, had Stacey Abrams tak­en that bill to the floor, it is no ven­ture to say there would have been no way you, nor any oth­er Repub­li­can in the House or Sen­ate, would have vot­ed for it. She would have been a polit­i­cal adver­sary rather than the leader of your par­ty. Had that been the case, the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty, after five years of a Stacey Abrams Gov­er­nor­ship, would be as strong as it has ever been going into the 2024 Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion. As it is, the so-called “Repub­li­can” Gov­er­nor of the State of Geor­gia, has emas­cu­lat­ed his own, so-called, polit­i­cal par­ty, in effect mak­ing it jump back flips to per­form what­ev­er his bid­ding might be, hop­ing the Gov­er­nor might give some “Repub­li­can” can­di­dates a few dol­lars from his lead­er­ship com­mit­tee, such that they might be able to com­pete in 2024.

Bri­an Kemp is no Repub­li­can. Nei­ther was Nathan Deal. Nei­ther was Son­ny Per­due. All of those gov­er­nors were Demo­c­rat makeovers. Per­due, a Demo­c­rat makeover, APPOINTED Bri­an Kemp as Sec­re­tary of State, enabling Kemp to run as an INCUMBENT in 2010, which launched Kem­p’s statewide polit­i­cal career. Why Kemp? Why not ANYONE else?Just read my Sub­stacks about Kemp. Throw out the rhetoric. Just look at the results. Under SoS Bri­an Kemp, our elec­tions wereremoved out from under the direct super­vi­sion of aca­d­e­m­ic pro­fes­sion­als at Ken­ne­saw State,put there orig­i­nal­ly to cre­ate an arm’s length between any SoS and the sys­tem under which the SoS, him­self, would be elect­ed, and placed per­fect con­trol under Kemp, as SoS, who as a first course of busi­ness per­son­al­ly super­vised his own elec­tion as gov­er­nor. And please do not argue with me whether Kemp would have been elect­ed or not because that is not the point. The point is thatone of three statewide office hold­ers, AND HIS SELECTED STAFF AND SELECTED ELECTION BOARD, now per­son­al­ly super­vise all elec­tions in the state, and Bri­an Kemp, as Gov­er­nor, per­son­al­ly car­ried the ball from the SoS’s office, to the Gov­er­nor’s office, cre­at­ing not only the con­di­tions under which the old elec­tion sys­tem would be dis­card­ed, but also the present elec­tion sys­tem would be pur­chased and installed. None of that could have hap­pened had Stacey Abrams been elect­ed gov­er­nor in 2018.

With­out even open­ing the door to dis­cuss Kem­p’s cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the 2020 elec­tion, Geor­gia’s Gov­er­nor voic­ing seri­ous con­cerns about that elec­tion, moments before sign­ing, a sig­na­ture which I argue may have changed the world we live in today, just for the one rea­son I have the time to dis­cuss this morn­ing, SB221, had Stacey Abrams been elect­ed Gov­er­nor in 2018 and 2022, Geor­gia and Amer­i­ca would be much bet­ter off today, going into the 2024 elec­tions. Of that I have no doubt.

Thanks very much for the ques­tion. If you desire to redeem your vote on SB221, I expect you would gar­ner much sup­port should you spon­sor a bill to repeal it.

And to my read­ers today, dont both­er bring­ing up Kemps appoint­ment of Kel­ly Loef­fler as Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor. True, Stacey Abrams would have appoint­ed one of the two Demo­c­rat sen­a­tors present­ly occu­py­ing those seats today. So what? What would have been dif­fer­ent? The only mean­ing­ful act Repub­li­can Kel­ly Loef­fler under­took as US Sen­a­tor from Geor­gia (oth­er than insid­er trad­ing) was dur­ing the late after­noon of Jan­u­ary 6, 2021,when she threw both the Trump pres­i­den­cy, and her own Repub­li­can sen­ate seat, under the bus, hand­ing both over to Democ­rats dur­ing the joint con­gres­sion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion hear­ing. Would a Sen­a­tor Doug Collins have done that? Doug has his faults, but would he have nev­er rolled over to the Democ­rats as Loef­fler did on Jan­u­ary 6.

So there you have it, the rea­sons Stacey Abrams would have been bet­ter for Geor­gia than Bri­an Kemp. If you dis­agree, fine. But if you do, tell me where I missed it.