(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . 5/30 GNR: Michigan MAGA Madness [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-05-30 I’m going to pull a bit of a Rachel Maddow on you today, delving into some amazing history from not all that long ago that some of us may have forgotten, and all of them are in deep denial over. If you do remember all of this, just repeat after various of us, “Repetition is good. Repetition is good.” And so are MAGA tears. I have a substantial collection of these on Pinterest, and some in the DK Image Library Michigan is what many of us hope to see the entire MAGA/Republican Party come to soon. Here in Good News Roundups, we regularly celebrate Republicans in Disarray, and this is it. We have a good review of how they got here to start with, and some even more recent developments to follow up. Even Donald Trump Doesn’t Know What He Created in the MAGA Swamps of Michigan The people assembled in this particular conference room were delegates from Michigan’s 9th Congressional District. They were among those who had come to Grand Rapids this past March for a statewide meeting to help nominate a Republican presidential candidate. And despite all of them believing that the nominee in question should be “Donald J. Trump”—as they insisted on saying his name, for some reason—they had already been there for four hours. Motion to vacate the chair! This scene was a small expression of the absurd dysfunction that has characterized the operations of the Michigan GOP for nearly a year. It is also a window into the problems of the current Republican Party writ large—one of many intraparty conflicts at the state and local level that are exploding across the country. Pro Publica: Scenes From a MAGA Meltdown: Inside the “America First” Movement’s War Over Democracy by Andy Kroll (Featured on Deadline White House) x For all the audiophiles: You can now *listen* to my latest @propublica story about Michigan using the @nytimes’ NYT AUDIO app. It sounds amazing. Props to the team there and to narrator @ericjasonmartin.https://t.co/KvOtAtvONc pic.twitter.com/UUi247idu5 — Andy Kroll (@AndyKroll) May 24, 2024 Across the country, the Republican Party’s rank-and-file have turned on the GOP establishment. In Michigan, this schism broke the party — and maybe democracy itself. Oh, I don’t fear for democracy, nor do I fear for the GQP. Not long ago, this setting was friendly terrain for [Peter] Meijer. For decades, voters here rewarded sensible [sic…Sorry, I mean sick], pro-business, avowedly conservative politicians. Meijer fit the archetype of a West Michigan Republican when he first ran for Congress in 2020. He was also basically Michigan royalty as an heir to the Meijer grocery store fortune. In one of the state’s most competitive districts, he won his debut congressional race by a comfortable 6-point margin. He voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump. In response, he faced a far-right primary challenger who had served in the Trump administration and said Biden’s 2020 victory was “simply mathematically impossible.” Meijer narrowly lost. Now, as a Senate candidate, he was trying to make amends, even pledging to vote for Trump — whom he had once called “unfit for office” — if the former president won the Republican nomination. But to some, he was still a traitor. That’s an anecdote. But we have statewide data. What divides the Republican Party of 2024 is not any one policy or ideology. It is not whether to support Donald Trump. The most important fault line in the party now is democracy itself. Today’s Republican insurgents believe democracy has been stolen, and they don’t trust the ability of democratic processes to restore it. See the lunatic Project 2025. It’s perhaps the starkest in Michigan, a place long associated with political pragmatism and a business-friendly GOP, embodied by governors George Romney, John Engler and, most recently, Rick Snyder. It was a son of Michigan, former President Gerald Ford, who once said, “I have never mistaken moderation for weakness, nor civility for surrender.” Michigan’s dynastic families — the DeVoses [Amway] and Meijers and Van Andels [Amway] on the west side, the Romneys and Fords on the east — poured money and manpower into the Michigan Republican Party, building it into one of the most vaunted political operations in the country. They transformed Michigan from a bastion of organized labor that leaned Democratic into a toss-up state that, until recently, had a right-to-work law. Yes, that was then, when Republicans could still pretend to have principles. Like The Devil take the hindmost. or Amway getting Federal law rewritten to say that they are not neither a pyramid scheme, so there! Then, Several years ago, however, my home state stopped making sense to me. I watched as thousands of political newcomers, whose sole qualification appeared to be fervor of belief, declared war on the Republican establishment that had been so dominant. Calling themselves the “America First” movement, these unknowns treated the DeVoses and other party leaders as the enemy. Actually, fervor of existential dread of losing age-old privilege, and no longer being able to keep Those People in their Divinely Ordained place. (This means you.) “We can’t keep going through election after election like this where a large plurality of the country just does not accept the outcome of the majority and refuses to abide by it,” said Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party who now works with the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “That’s when the system falls apart.” We also have the latest series of blowups. A solution arrived in the form of the “precinct strategy.” It was a plan promoted by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to ensure that the political establishment in both parties didn’t “steal” future elections. The precinct strategy proved successful. In Michigan, thousands of new activists, many recruited by “America First” groups, became precinct delegates in 2022. The first test for the new “America First” delegates came in late August 2022. In Michigan, the voters select most nominees for elected office in a normal primary election. But for two key positions with oversight of elections — attorney general and secretary of state — the precinct delegates decide the party’s nominees at a statewide convention. These conventions were often sleepy affairs, the outcome predetermined. But this time, when the party’s chair, a wealthy donor and former U.S. ambassador named Ron Weiser, took the stage, the cavernous ballroom filled with boos and jeers. Oops. Over the opposition of Weiser and other longtime party operatives, the “America First” contingent nominated two election deniers for attorney general and secretary of state. Matthew DePerno, a combative lawyer who had promoted a viral yet baseless theory about voting fraud in tiny Antrim County, Michigan, vowed to use the power of the attorney general’s office to investigate election crimes. Kristina Karamo, a tall, commanding woman in her late 30s with a breathless speaking style, was the “America First” pick for secretary of state. A community college instructor and live-trivia host, Karamo had come to prominence after she testified before the Michigan Legislature about irregularities involving ballot counting and voting machines she said she’d witnessed as a poll challenger in Detroit in 2020. Cue the disaster. As a show of political force, nominating DePerno and Karamo was impressive. As an electoral strategy, it was disastrous. Both candidates were trounced in November, and Michigan Democrats won control of all three branches of government for the first time in more than 30 years. Now you’re talking. Several months later, she and DePerno ran against each other to be the next chair of the Michigan Republican Party. DePerno won endorsements from Trump and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and a funder of the election-fraud movement. But the delegates rallied behind Karamo and delivered her the victory. Cue the next disaster. No sooner had Karamo won than paranoia set in. Standing on the convention floor just before her victory, a well-connected precinct delegate approached Beyer to deliver a message. “He says, ‘Leadership is going to let you guys have this one,’” Beyer recalled. Karamo would be chair, in other words, because party leaders let it happen. Why’d they do that, Beyer asked. “Because they believe that they can make her fail quicker than they can Matt DePerno.” I will pass over Karamo’s incompetence, and her move to put in a new party Constitution, among other shenanigans that I encourage you to read about elsewhere. On Jan. 6, 2024, a group of anti-Karamo delegates on the Republican state committee invoked party bylaws and voted to remove Karamo as chair. Two weeks later, the same faction elected former U.S. representative Pete Hoekstra to replace her. Karamo refused to leave office, saying the vote to oust her was “illegitimate.” An unsigned statement issued by the state GOP called it a “political lynching.” Her critics filed a lawsuit in state court to enforce the removal vote, and Karamo said only a judge’s order could make her leave. [It did.] In the meantime, she urged her followers to travel to Detroit on March 2 for a special convention. There, they would vote on her controversial plan to rewrite the Michigan GOP’s constitution. At his mid-February rally, Trump waded into the chaotic mess that was the Michigan Republican Party despite his supporters urging him not to. He described Hoekstra as “your new Michigan Republican Party chairman,” a line that was greeted with a mix of cheers and boos. The boos continued as Trump said he’d recommended Hoekstra for the job. “I said, ‘Do you think you could ever get this guy Hoekstra? He’s unbelievable,’” Trump said. Karamo’s convention was called off, but another in support of her was immediately planned. The Party under Hoekstra Michigan GOP expects it will have to 'clarify and correct' fundraising reports Michigan GOP Chairman Pete Hoekstra said in a letter to the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday that his administration has launched a "comprehensive audit" of the state party's finances and expects it will have to remedy problems with past fundraising disclosures. Among the reasons critics of Karamo moved to oust her were her struggles to raise money for the party, which had about $35,000 in its bank accounts in August, according to internal records reviewed by The Detroit News. Pete Hoekstra: ‘There’s lots of folks investing in the MI GOP’ Hoekstra suggests his party is working in Southeast Michigan to rally new members to the state GOP, but also plans to target union members. “These are folks who are getting hammered by inflation. These are individuals that are in fear of their jobs, because of this almost religious passion that Joe Biden and Gretchen Whitmer have for electric vehicles,” Hoekstra claimed. “It really threatens the jobs of a lot of automobile industry workers in the state of Michigan.” As if. The Successful UAW Strike Portends a Successful EV Transition P. D. Q. Bach P.D.Q. Bach - Fanfare for the Common Cold (S. 98.7) [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/5/30/2242922/-5-30-GNR-Michigan-MAGA-Madness?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/