Another article in my continuing series of watching the Michigan GOP disintegrate before our very eyes.
The Michigan GOP and its leadership continue its race to irrelevancy and, with all of my years being involved and watching politics, I can't help but wonder if this is an inside job. I mean technically, of course, it's an inside job because it's the people in the leadership that are torpedoing the party, but what I'm wondering is: Are some of these people actually Democrats and not Republicans?
Yeah, I get a lot of people are going to say "uni party," but they're supposed to pretend at least that there's a difference and act like they want the party to do well. But currently, they're not even doing that.
Just as a refresher if this is your first time here, I have been following the debacle that is Kristina Karamo's leadership since her election in February. I knew there was something odd when one of her first acts was to declare they would not be using the GOP HQ building in Lansing and instead moving to a P.O. Box for official mail to the west side of the state.
I covered that right here
Did the Michigan GOP Just Concede the 2024 POTUS Race With Its Latest Move?
The latest installment of the Michigan Republican Follies comes in the form of news that the newly elected Michigan GOP chair Kristina Karamo has decided to abandon the Michigan GOP headquarters in Lansing, Michigan. There is nothing really wrong with the building, but she decided that it was time to move party operations across the state and use a P.O. Box out of Grand Rapids for an official mailing address.
How 21st century is that?
From The Detroit News
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.
Full-blown clown show going on right now and if you think otherwise, look in the mirror to see how thick that makeup is caked on your face.
Now, somehow, the Detroit News was able to get the very agreement that Karamo says she could not get her hands on, which explains exactly how building trust works. I have a feeling that currently, the Michigan GOP does not have many lawyers on staff that could possibly explain how this all works, so the prudent thing is just to abandon the building.
That will teach the establishment folks.
This was within the first month.
Since then, Karamo and her Democrat-lite apologists have cheered on all this
Michigan GOP Meeting at Mackinac Island Labeled a Historic Flop, as Party Leader Fumes
With Just Over 30k in the Bank, the Funeral March Has Begun for the Michigan GOP
Just go ahead and read those articles and then tell me that you think the Michigan GOP is a functioning or thriving party.
If you have common sense and know that men can't pretend to be women to win swimming events you have to come to the sensible conclusion that under Karamo, in just under nine months, the party has absolutely sunk to depths that have not been seen in modern times.
Now, the inner party wrestling begins because, thankfully, some people in this state want to do more than pretend the Michigan GOP is functioning for the rest of 2023 going into 2024.
I read about some of it here, and it seems Karamo is trying to squelch an attempt to boot her long before her term is up in 2025.
Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Kristina Karamo has taken influential positions within the state GOP away from her critics in recent days as a struggle over the future of the party turns more serious, less than a year before the next presidential election.
The moves, which Karamo unveiled in an email late Friday night, came amid a petition effort to force her out as the party's leader and amid ongoing concerns about fundraising woes and the Michigan GOP's ability to meet its financial obligations.
Among other changes, Karamo removed Andy Sebolt, a longtime Republican activist from Oceana County, as chairman of the Michigan Republican Party's policy committee, a key panel that helps make decisions about the party's operations. She also dissolved the party's conflict-resolution committee, which was supposed to handle internal disagreements that can influence the balance of power within the GOP.
As Billy Mays used to say, "BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!"
Daniel Lawless, a member of the Michigan Republican Party's state committee, has circulated a petition to remove Karamo to other committee members, saying Karamo was "woefully behind" on fundraising and had "abandoned" a campaign promise of fiscal transparency.
Karamo's opponents have said they need 50% of the members of the state committee to sign the removal petition to call for a vote on whether she should remain chairwoman. Then, under current policies, 75% of the committee would have to vote in favor of removing her.
Sebolt said Karamo's actions on Friday turned more members of the state committee against her.
Now, under the changes, about 26 members of the state committee no longer have assignments to standing committees, like the policy, conflict-resolution and events panels, Sebolt said.
Norm Shinkle of Ingham County, a longtime member of the Michigan Republican Party's state committee, said traditionally every member of the state committee had one position on a standing committee of the party. Shinkle had been a member of the dissolved conflict-resolution committee, for instance, but now has no assignment.
It appears Karamo put new people on the policy committee so she can get her way with the panel, Shinkle said.
Hopefully, there is enough sentiment in the GOP committee to make this move. Anyone claiming that more time is needed or that the establishment has just plain screwed the grassroots has no basis for that and doesn't know what they're talking about.
The Michigan GOP, for years, has been the benefactor of people with gobs of money who donated and have gotten no benefit like a tax deduction for giving money to a political party. They have done it because they agreed with the grassroots folks of the party 70 to 80 percent of the time.
Now, the people who voted for Kristina Karamo aren't willing to part with any of their hard-earned money to fund her plans to reorganize the Michigan GOP. This isn't my speculation but just a plain old fact.
If it were the other way around, Karamo would be crowing about how much money was coming in, but she isn't; she's shutting off access to information and being less transparent by the day and not working with people on the GOP committees but eliminating assignments for them that gave them a little more power to look deeper into what the day-to-day operations are accomplishing.
Karamo promised more transparency at the convention back in February. Yet she is becoming less so by the day, and these latest moves prove it,
Parties are made up of people, and of course, people sometimes make mistakes.
The Michigan GOP made one back in February by electing somebody who had never run a lemonade stand, let alone a major state party, and lost her race for Secretary of State by damn near a historic margin. She claims there's fraud, but she's never provided one iota of evidence, and here you are today with a Michigan GOP less than a year away from a presidential election more dysfunctional than it's ever been.
Does anyone want to guess what will happen next year with statewide elections for Republicans with a dysfunctional GOP? You can try to claim fraud, but your own incompetence will have defeated you.
If Michigan Democrats didn't put Karamo up to this historic disaster, they better be sending her one hell of a CHRISTmas card in the next couple of weeks, just as simple thank you.
'TIs the least they could do.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member