While the MAGA-world implodes over the Jeffrey Epstein files, Bloomberg columnist Mary Ellen Klas says ultraconservatives are similarly at war with monied GOP leaders in Georgia.
“The infighting may provide a window into what Republicans are now facing as the heretofore monolithic MAGA movement begins to fissure. And whether nationally or in Georgia, an intraparty firefight could darken the party's chances in the midterms,” Klas said in a column posted by the Charlotte Observer.
Wealthy GOP financier Brant Frost IV, now charged with conducting a $140 million Ponzi scheme in connection with First Liberty, has already apologized for his "damage” to at least 300 defrauded investors and is now cooperating with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But Frost helped launch and bankroll the Georgia Republican Assembly (GRA), which has grabbed the reins of GOP power in the state while pushing the party further to the right.
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The GRA championed resolutions punishing mainstream Republican officeholders for upsetting the MAGA agenda, even when it was Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger or Gov. Brian Kemp rejecting President Donald Trump's demands to illegally overturn the 2020 election. The group also wants to impose a “purity test” to prevent insufficiently MAGA politicians from running for office and almost blocked Raffensperger from running as a Republican in 2026.
Critics like long-time Republican Party activist and a founding GRA member Debbie Dooley now says GRA leaders “got power hungry.”
“They started using heavy-handed tactics and they just lost their way,” Klas reports.
The GRA presented its own slate of candidates at a recent GOP convention, but when their unpopular candidates tanked they accused party leadership of "rigging the election."
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"It's conspiracy theory central," Dooley told Klas. "If they can't be in control, they want to tear it down."
“It's hard to imagine that no one realized the irony of one faction of the Georgia Republican Party accusing another faction of operating a cover-up without verifiable proof,” said Klas. “Since Trump emerged on the political scene with his birther conspiracy, Republicans in government and media have pulled conspiratorial rhetoric into their force-field so often that it's become the new normal.”
Now the name of financier Brant Frost is doing nothing for unity, with GRA former target Raffensberger investigating First Liberty and demanding all First Liberty campaign money recipients return their donations.
But in a voting group so flooded with conspiracy theories, Frost sold honesty and truth to “authentic followers of Christ," said Klas, and this latest betrayal in a political party so rife with falsehoods may have done irreversible injury to the party just in time for the midterms and the gubernatorial election.
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Read the full Charlotte Observer report at this link.