Brian Kemp – Deep Left Field

At the urging of failed, one-term former President Donald Trump, ex-Georgia Sen. David Perdue (R) will announce his candidacy to be the 2022 GOP nominee for governor of the state of Georgia today, a direct slap in the face of current Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who is seeking reelection for a second term in office.

Perdue’s challenge to Kemp has set off panic within the Georgia Republican Party, with Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan going on CNN Monday morning and begging Trump to stay out of the state’s politics, which would likely hand the state to likely Democratic nominee, Stacey Abrams.

Duncan told CNN host John Berman:

“Brian Kemp is probably Georgia’s most conservative governor in history. He has done everything he needs to do. We’ve cut taxes, we’ve increased teacher pay, we’ve navigated through a pandemic, we’ve got $6 billion in a rainy day fund and, quite honestly, David Perdue should know better than this. He’s the only one to blame for losing his last election to Jon Ossoff and he ran the worst campaign ever — and that’s his fault not Brian Kemp’s or Geoff Duncan’s or any other Republican’s fault.”

That led Berman to ask this about why Perdue would challenge the incumbent Kemp:

“What issue do you see him running on? I mean, what do you think he big issue for him is then?”

Duncan responded:

“It appears early on he will try to carry Donald Trump’s water on the conspiracy stuff and that seems to be the only tail wind he’s got, it’s unfortunate. We what much this play out all across the country. But look, his is a short-term sugar high, it will wear off. The quicker we take our medicine as Republicans and move on and focus on the next election, the next opportunity to lead this country, the quicker we are going to get the White House back, the Senate back, the House back and have opportunities to put our conservative leadership on display.”

Duncan then added:

“We don’t need the traveling circus of Donald Trump to stay here in Georgia. We need it to stay down in Mar-a-Lago, working on his handicap playing golf and let us be conservatives here in Georgia and move forward.”

Is there any chance Trump will heed Duncan’s pleadings? Of course not! The petty former president has an ax to grind and his ego has to be satiated.

Here’s the video from CNN:

The voter suppression bill that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed last week was supposedly (according to him and other Republican leaders in the Peach State) necessary to fight voter fraud.

On Tuesday, Kemp was still defending the legislation:

“I’ve always been passionate about making it easy to vote and hard to cheat. You know, the voters in Georgia are pretty smart and I trust them to take a hard look and figure out for themselves what is really in it and what’s not.”

But just a few hours later, Kemp flatly admitted that the bill had nothing at all to do with fraud or cheating by Georgia voters, telling WABE radio:

“A lot of this bill is dealing with the mechanics of the election. It has nothing to do with potential fraud or not.”

Kemp also suggested that since the GOP controls the Georgia General Assembly, they can pass any laws they want, no matter what anyone else thinks:

“I’ve heard a lot of the Democrats say this year the elections have consequences. And they certainly do.
“And the people that are still governing in the General Assembly wanted to do something about the problems that they saw with this election. And that’s exactly what they have done, which is how the process works.”

So there’s no fraud that needs to be fought against, but since Republicans are in charge, they can do as they please. That’s a hell of a way to look at things.

However, Kemp’s legislation is already causing major problems for Georgia economically, with a boycott being called for and the CEO’s of both Delta and Coca-Cola (both headquartered in the Peach State) saying the new law is unacceptable.

Several lawsuits have also been filed to void the Georgia voting law, any of which could succeed. But will they before the 2022 midterm?

Republicans can’t win elections unless they cheat. If you doubt that, keep in mind that even Gov. Brian Kemp admitted so.