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.
My disillusionment with the Republicans began in earnest when the GOP nominated McCain to go up against Obama in 2008. There was no way an old, white-haired man was going to win against the young and savy Obama. It was just McCain’s turn to give it a go.
Don’t get me wrong, in hindsight I’m glad that Obama won, the United States needed his Presidency and he did a good job after a bumpy two or three years.
But Mitt Romney was a better pick than McCain, and to this day I think he would have made a good President. His denouncing Trump on his way out bolsters that opinion.
Level-headed Republicans are dead now (many literally so).