I must resist the need to scream I TOLD YOU SO because the party is not yet super, super dead.
The body is still twitching a bit, but not much.
First off, before I go into my article here I just want to revisit one thing to make sure everyone who reads this is clear on my credentials to say what I’m going to write. My name is Duke and I have lived in Michigan all my life. I was a member of the Michigan Republican Party for about a year and quit when I was told in 1992 that asking why Bush 41 had broken his no new taxes pledge was inappropriate for a Republican in good standing.
I thought that was crazy in as much that asking a policy question was not allowed, and the party has been going downhill ever since. Hence this post and some of the other posts I have written and will link to here.
So while I have not been a member in good standing, I have watched and talked with those who are and it is not gotten better in over 30 years.
Which brings us to today.
The party is damn near dead.
Now this is not because of anything I have written or thought but is based on actions and common sense.
I wrote this article a couple of months back announcing that the Michigan GOP will be a non-entity leading up to the 2024 election. This is not meant to hurt anyone’s feelings but is based on the actions of the new chairperson Kristina Karamo.
Did the Michigan GOP Just Concede the 2024 POTUS Race With Its Latest Move?
Kristina Karamo, the new chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, announced Monday she doesn’t plan to use the GOP’s longtime headquarters in Lansing, a development that represents a significant shift in the party’s operations.
Karamo, a frequent critic of the so-called Republican “establishment,” contended there were better ways to expend donors’ contributions than paying a trust, run by former party chairs, that controls the property. It would cost about $12,000 a month to keep operating out of the building, wrote Karamo and her co-chair, Malinda Pego, in an “update” email to Republican activists.
“Instead of paying a lease/rent to ‘a trust’ that is claiming we can’t even see the trust documents, and instead of attempting to repair the building that does not belong to MIGOP, we shall not be making use of this building given that, to do so, does not represent best use of fundraising dollars,” Karamo and Pego wrote.
Holding a Zoom meeting from a McDonald’s lobby to discuss how the GOP is going to win in 2024 might not be the best strategy and will not inspire confidence in donors and potential candidates.
Karamo followed up with this admission a couple of weeks later
Michigan GOP Leader Admits They Are Half Million in Debt and That Is the Good News
“The party is in debt. $460,000,” Karamo said during the Muskegon County event.
“So that is something we’re working through,” she added. “But we do have funding to get started and get our initial operations going. Hopefully, the former chair will be gracious enough to pay that off.”
The former chairman, Ron Weiser, a wealthy real estate businessman from Ann Arbor, decided not to seek another term this year.
The party’s overall debt can be hard to nail down because it has multiple accounts, some that have to be reported publicly and others that don’t.
Asked about the $460,000 in alleged debt, Weiser didn’t refute the number in a Friday statement. But he also gave no indication he would step in to resolve it.
Weiser said he had given more than $5 million to help Republicans win elections for the 2022 cycle. Like other party organizations, there was “a relatively small amount of debt left over that represents less than 4% of total revenues,” Weiser said.
So the party had a debt of a half million dollars and that is about FOUR PERCENT of the total revenues that it takes to run the party operations. The former chairperson seems to be in no mood to donate to the party and the person who replaced him criticized him heavily.
Now in all fairness to Karamo, her predecessor deserved it, but he is under no obligation to cough up another dime. If she didn’t want the job she should have not run for it.
Now The Hill has confirmed for official Washington what I suspected months ago. Michigan GOP faces existential crisis: ‘The state party is dead’
From that article…
Michigan’s Republican Party is grappling with disunity and disarray as it looks to regain lost political ground ahead of 2024.
The state party is facing a slew of negative headlines painting a picture of warring factions in dire financial straits. Last week, reports surfaced that an alleged fight broke out between allies of the party’s new chair, Kristina Karamo, and her former opponent for the position, Matthew DePerno.
On top of that, Karamo has faced criticism of her own from both inside and outside the GOP for a number of remarks, including for comparing gun control restrictions to the treatment of Jewish people during the Holocaust.
“I think the state party is dead,” former Rep. Dave Trott (R-Mich.) told The Hill.
The barrage of negative press has many Michigan Republicans worried that the state of the party will hinder their efforts in what is expected to be a major political battleground next year.
I have been told by people in and around Michigan politics that both the Trump campaign folks and the Ron DeSantis team have been in the state and are not pleased with how the state party is looking.
Essentially what that means is that Michigan will be written off long before the GOP convention next summer and money that would be spent here will be allocated elsewhere no matter who the nominee is. That will have a negative effect on down tickets where the GP is short just one seat in both the Michigan House and Senate.
If you want to win elections you have to deal with the reality on the ground, not the fantasy that people push based on their hopes, dreams, and feelings. Hopefully, the folks in the Michigan GOP realize this but I’m running out of hope.
The body of the party is not moving anymore.
HEY, maybe you have some thoughts on any of this, you can always let me know by checking out my bio RIGHT HERE and let me know via email or multiple social media platforms. Also, you can check out my FACEBOOK LIVE every Mon-Wed-Fri at 10 EDT over at Duke Over America and let me know what you think in real-time.
