The 2 Republican Parties of Georgia

The 2 Republican Parties of Georgia
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference in Atlanta, on Nov. 11, 2020. (Brynn Anderson/AP Photo)
Roger L. Simon
12/1/2020
Updated:
12/1/2020
Commentary

ATLANTA—When I finally arrived at the right Maggiano’s on Nov. 30 after a rain-splattered drive from Nashville—I discovered, much to my chagrin, there are three Maggiano’s in Atlanta, and I had first gone to the wrong one—I was met by about two dozen patient Republican, or perhaps I should more accurately say conservative, activists in a private dining room.

They had been assembled, in absentia by Maria Zack of nationsinaction.org, to give me their insiders’ views of what had gone on during the presidential election and what was likely to happen in the Senate runoff. Their views were to be off the record with no names attached so feel free to take that into consideration, though I had no reason to disbelieve what they were saying.

One or two of the group were Georgia politicians, others Republican Party organizers, still others had been poll watchers.

None had anything good to say about the election or how it was conducted.

Nor did anyone have anything good to say about fellow Republicans Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp or Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, although there was simultaneously a sense of bewilderment, even betrayal. The two men had been longtime personal friends of several people in the room.

They were confused about how it happened that Kemp, who was himself secretary of state in 2018 when the Dominion system was officially adopted for Georgia elections, had made that decision.

Kemp had assembled a group of 25 to study the system—one of whom was a lobbyist for Dominion, alas—but that study, conducted after Texas had already rejected the company’s equipment as too permeable, remains hidden.

Raffensperger inherited it and acted as something of a czar over the 2020 election. (No one used that exact word. It’s my characterization.) He exercised sole control of the rules of the election.

One of those rules, I was told, was one poll watcher to 10 counting tables, making real oversight untenable (no pun intended).

An African American couple in attendance reported that in south Fulton County (a heavily black neighborhood), three or four Democratic watchers would gather around one table. No one complained.

That lack of complaint, the female member of the couple averred, stemmed from Republican fear of being accused of racism by Stacey Abrams, the African American politician who acts as if she never lost the gubernatorial election to Kemp.

In a sense, there are two Republican parties in Georgia—those who are cowed by Abrams and those who aren’t.

(Those in the room with me were definitely in the “not” squad.)

Add into that more than a soupçon of corruption and you have a state on the brink of being America’s first banana state, if not already over it, with the current recount in progress an exercise in futility.

As we said in the early days of computers: garbage in, garbage out.

But this may have been planned.

Before going further, allow me to roll back to 2016. At that point, Trevor Loudon—a name familiar to Epoch Times readers, one of our columnists known as one of the more renowned experts on communist subversion—visited Zack and others in Atlanta.

At that time, he warned them of a strategy of George Soros and those working for and with him to turn four states blue and ultimately to socialism via candidates for various offices. They were Georgia, Arizona, Maryland, and Florida.

Georgia and Arizona are swing states currently under contention. Enough said. We have seen the recent activities of the Maryland governor, a Republican, nota bene, who wants Trump to “stop golfing and concede” and is releasing prison inmates to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

As for Florida, Andrew Gillum, a man of, let’s be kind, uncertain character came within a whisker of the governorship.

So Loudon’s warnings had validity and they are playing out before our eyes today.

One of the questions I will be exploring in the next couple of days here in Atlanta is how the ballot print-outs actually work. I understand those in some counties have QR codes and others normal bar codes, along with the plain English renderings of whom the voter chose.

Of course, those codes could say the reverse without the voter realizing it. QR codes can only be read with a cellphone, which are forbidden inside the polling booths almost everywhere.

It’s highly unlikely I can get to the bottom of this, even though the voting machines themselves have finally been frozen after multiple reversals by the judge, but I can ask.

To what end, however? It’s been several weeks and one would imagine if people were fooling with the software, they have had plenty of time to cover their tracks.

Furthermore, getting answers to anything electoral in Georgia, I was told, is difficult. Because of the unique history of their laws, passing the buck is easy. Although the secretary of state dictates the election rules, the counties themselves are under no real constraint to follow them. Local officials are on their own. Finding out who did what is a nightmare.

One of the more interesting reactions, therefore, among the assembled group, many of whom were libertarian or libertarian-leaning, was the reluctant acknowledgment that real government regulation—that is, uniform federal regulation of elections—is now necessary to save our republic.

Call that the Georgia Compromise.

Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, co-founder of PJMedia, and now, editor-at-large for The Epoch Times. His most recent books are “The GOAT” (fiction) and “I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already” (nonfiction). Find him on Parler @rogerlsimon.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, co-founder of PJMedia, and now, columnist for The Epoch Times. His latest book “American Refugees” can be ordered on Amazon. “Roger Simon is among the many refugees fleeing blue state neoliberalism, and he’s written the best account of our generation’s greatest migration.”—Tucker Carlson.
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