In a not-unexpected followup to Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan’s (R-GA) comments concerning the new Georgia law on voting, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports Duncan is taking the hard path of politics:
Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan is unlikely to run for a second term as the state’s No. 2 politician, according to a senior aide who said the Republican is instead expected to focus on his “GOP 2.0” initiative to reframe the party in a post-Trump era.
Duncan has signaled for months that he would not seek reelection after he’s repeatedly criticized former President Donald Trump, but he’s declined to say publicly whether he will stand for another term. Duncan’s chief of staff, John Porter, said the lieutenant governor was not planning a 2022 bid, though he added the decision hasn’t been finalized.
Instead:
Over the past few months, Duncan has repeatedly urged fellow Republicans to leave Trump in the rearview mirror. He’s called proposed rollbacks to voting rights “solutions in search of a problem,” and he refused to preside over a Senate vote on election restrictions.
He’s also more aggressively promoted his vision of a big-tent brand of Republican politics, taking steps to set up an independent group that recently launched a website claiming a “better way forward.”
Which isn’t so popular with his cohorts:
But the message has alienated fellow Republicans who say it misreads Trump’s enduring popularity among the party’s core activists. State Sen. Burt Jones, a Jackson Republican who was stripped of a chairmanship by Duncan in January, said he and his colleagues were confounded by the lieutenant governor’s approach.
“The caucus is saying one thing, and he’s going on AJC or CNN and saying the opposite,” Jones said. “The optics just aren’t good.”
That’s a sad thing for Senator Jones to say – not because Duncan is acting contrary to GOP interests, but because Jones is acting contrary to GOP interests.
One of the responsibilities of the leaders of virtually any organization is to look out for the long-term interests of the organization. In the case of the GOP, it’s necessary to recognize that Trump and many of his minions were out and out liars, as documented by WaPo and other organizations, who encouraged the January 6th insurrection in their desperate bid to retain power – and not look like losers, a documented fear of the former President’s.
In a country that puts some value on respect for truth and facts, this leaves the GOP at a competitive disadvantage, as Gallup recently documented to much discussion. The nine point Democratic advantage, which some cautioned to be likely temporary, may be a more permanent fixture if the GOP clings to the image of a semi-popular former President Trump leading the Party. In my view, the actions of the President during and after his Administration, which will be the fodder for messaging by a savvy Democratic Party which finds a way to positively spin their far-left wing, or repels it effectively, has the potential to put the fringe-right that now dominates the Republicans into a permanent and loathed minority status, a minority that is automatically not trusted.
And Jones is doing nothing to mitigate this fate. He’s too focused on the toxic loyalty tenet that led the Republicans into this catastrophe in the first place; Duncan, on the other hand, knows there is trouble in the Republican swamp and is trying to drain it. I think he’ll fail, but at least he’s trying to do the right thing.
Good luck to Duncan. If Jones doesn’t change his tune, he’ll end up on the dismal dust heap of history.
