Open Threads

A “Party of losers”? Dysfunction in Michigan, broke in Arizona, alienated in Georgia, the GOP is plagued by MAGA incompetence, infighting and a feckless national party leadership who don’t know how or won’t rebuke Nazi rhetoric by their Dear Leader.
Yup.https://t.co/st3IALhosA

— Michael Steele (@MichaelSteele) November 14, 2023

Y’all remember Michael Steele, ‘Chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) from 2009 until 2011’ ?

Per the Washington Post, ‘National Republicans fear the cash crunch could hamper field operations in key swing states come 2024’ [unpaywalled gift link]:

In Arizona, the state GOP chairman has been begging the Republican National Committee for a financial bailout. Michigan party officials have gotten into physical fights as their finances have dipped into the red. And in Georgia, the state party is in a standoff with the Republican governor and saddled with legal fees for alternate electors put forward in 2020.

In each of these 2024 battlegrounds, election denial and grass-roots fervor for former president Donald Trump have rocked the Republican apparatus. Now, the state parties are plagued by infighting, struggling to raise money and sometimes to cover legal costs stemming from Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat — threatening to hamper GOP organizing capabilities in next year’s presidential election.

“There has been an emphasis on ideological cleansing instead of electioneering,” said John Watson, the Georgia GOP chairman from 2017 to 2019. “If those new entrants to the party want to argue the earth is flat and the election is stolen, those are counterproductive to winning elections.”

State parties are typically critical in election years for mobilizing volunteers and running get-out-the-vote efforts, and they can collect larger checks or buy cheaper airtime than other groups. Those functions are now in doubt as the fissures fuel finger-pointing and competition for donor dollars. Even as more experienced leaders have taken the reins in some cases, they are struggling to undo some of the damage from MAGA-aligned predecessors and deal with continued pressure from the movement.

The transformation in these key states is the result of a coordinated movement, sometimes called the “Precinct Strategy.” Former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon and other MAGA influencers have promoted the effort in the past three years to slot election deniers into local party positions and demand new leadership. In local and state parties across the country, operatives and local officials say the makeup of state party leadership has changed…

As one senior Republican who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid put it, for anyone seen as out of step with the MAGA movement, “they will not work with you; you’re the devil.”…

Arizona: ‘We desperately need to keep the lights on’
In January, Jeff DeWit was elected Arizona state GOP chairman as a consensus choice who could bridge the party’s internal divisions between pro-Trump, election-denying activists and more-traditional conservatives, given his record of winning a statewide race in 2014 for treasurer and his early support of Trump’s first presidential run. He inherited a party in disarray from the previous chair, Kelli Ward, a MAGA firebrand who led efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss in the state and has since decamped to a boat in the Caribbean.

DeWit has repeatedly asked national Republican groups for financial support that largely has not come. His appeals to the RNC began in February and have extended through mid-September, including to national and regional staffers and directly to RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, according to people familiar with the discussions, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations…

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Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: Among the Reasons the MAGA Caucus Is (Especially) Angry Right NowPost + Comments (130)