A party suspicious of elections dismisses its election officials and cheers outsiders

At the beginning of the Georgia Republican state convention in Columbus Friday afternoon, a chorus line of Republican statewide officials, legislators and members of Congress took the stage to greet the party faithful.

One by one, they talked about what they’d accomplished for the state and how they were carrying on the party’s message. A couple dared to mention Gov. Brian Kemp as they described what the GOP was getting done for the state, but only in passing.

All that any of them got was polite applause. Then Steve Friend, a disgruntled federal employee who has written a book, came to the microphone and introduced himself as an FBI whistleblower. That was all it took for him to get a loud ovation. I was watching live streaming of the event on Columbus television station WRBL, but without being there, I think it’s safe to say the hall erupted.

There was a healthy show of hands when the chair asked how many people were attending their first convention. This was a convention of people not simply uninterested in the details of government but also deeply suspicious of it.

Donald Trump noticed something similar. After he’d spoken to the convention in Columbus Saturday afternoon, the former president mused to a similar audience in North Carolina about how he gets only tepid applause when he talks about taxes.

“I talk about transgender; everyone goes crazy. Who would have thought? Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was,” Trump said.

State parties exist to help their members define their issues, get to know their candidates and help them get elected. The Georgia Republican Party has reached a place where that simple string has been broken. This doesn’t mean Republican voters won’t continue to elect Republicans. It means that the party will matter less and less in that process.

Former Vice President Mike Pence would have found this a tough crowd if he hadn’t canceled. His replacement was the nation’s second most famous election denier, Kari Lake of Arizona. They were putty in her hands.

“Frankly, now is the time to cling to our guns and our religion,” Lake said Friday night, warning that Donald Trump’s gun-owning supporters would rise up if prosecutors “lay a finger” on the former president.

Trump was defiant in his speech Saturday, the first since his federal indictment. He asserted once again that he won the 2020 election, along with his hand-picked Georgia candidates. But he avoided taking on Kemp directly and made only passing reference to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

For Trump, all issues lead very quickly back to him.

“You know, what is happening to your beautiful Atlanta is so horrible, so horrible. People are afraid to walk outside. And no criminal is more protected than crooked Joe Biden,” Trump said.

In the middle of his speech, Trump called Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to the stage for a few words. The former president sets great store by how much energy a candidate has, and it was as if he needed an extra jolt of Red Bull from his favorite delegation member. Then he returned to the microphone and talked about how he’d made a perfect phone call to Georgia, how Atlanta, with its “lunatic, Marxist district attorney,” has “the highest per capita crime rate in the country,” and how he was the only person who can save the world from a nuclear apocalypse.

Just moments before Trump took the stage in Columbus, the delegates were arguing about election integrity. Not in state and federal elections but the elections that were about to take place for party offices. When his speech was over, the delegates elected a slate that reflected the party’s populist shift.

Former Sen. Josh McCoon, who cast himself as a unity candidate, was elected to succeed outgoing chairman David Shafer. The election which really reflected the flavor of the convention was for first vice chair, in which the delegates rejected not only the candidate perceived as the “establishment” choice but the candidate put forth by the group which was formed in opposition to the establishment, the Georgia Republican Alliance. Instead, the delegates elected Brian Pritchard, a right-wing radio personality who has been under investigation for illegally voting in Georgia because of a prior felony conviction in another state. That showed ‘em.