Republicans are pushing for the removal of Kristina Karamo, an election-denying activist who rose to lead the state party this year, amid mounting financial problems and persistent infighting.
The mutiny took hold on Mackinac Island.
The Michigan Republican Party’s revered two-day policy and politics gathering, the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, was an utter mess.
Attendance had plummeted. Top-tier presidential candidates skipped the September event, and some speakers didn’t show. Guests were baffled by a scoring system that rated their ideology on a scale, from a true conservative to a so-called RINO, or Republican in name only.
And the state party, already deeply in debt, had taken out a $110,000 loan to pay the keynote speaker, Jim Caviezel, an actor who has built an ardent following among the far right after starring in a hit movie this summer about child sex trafficking. The loan came from a trust tied to the wife of the party’s executive director, according to party records.
For some Michigan Republicans, it was the final straw for a chaotic state party leadership that has been plagued by mounting financial problems, lackluster fund-raising, secretive meetings and persistent infighting. Blame has centered on the fiery chairwoman, Kristina Karamo, who skyrocketed to the top of the state party through a combative brand of election denialism but has failed to make good on her promises for new fund-raising sources and armies of activists.
GOP knew taking the TEA party into their ranks 10 years ago and every other extremist group and ideology based on hate and fear mongering was going to burn them before their careers were done, they just didn’t have an escape plan on how to drop the losers when it was going to become obvious the moderates and independents stopped voting for their assinine causes.
They were warned loudly years ago this was going to happen but their can’t see past the next election so they didn’t care then and they still don’t care now of they come out of the next cycle of elections with any power in tact. Lucky for them GOP voters will vote anything with ® by its name, something the Democrats don’t have quite so many willfully ignorant morons around to fill out their strategy with.
This was all predictable, and they’re reaping the consequences now. While Republican voters will vote for any R, the candidates are starting to realize that isn’t enough. Suburban middle class swing voters are not the reliable Republican voters they thought they were.
The Tea Party was astroturfing. It was started within the GOP as a pretend grassroots effort to pretend they weren’t the one’s cheering Bush along for every mistake he made. It was all the same people, though. It wasn’t some weird outside thing that got absorbed into the GOP. This is always who they were, but this time with filters taken off.
The tax day protests of 2009 were more or less the official start of the Tea Party. Free Republic (a popular far-right web site at the time) was cheering them along. You can see there how the guest list is filled with right wing media personalities. Hannity, Beck, and Gingrich were all there. Insiders were all lined up from the start.