I grew up in suburban metro Atlanta, Georgia, under one party and primarily Democratic rule. I proudly served in senior staff positions for lifelong Democrats and 'Blue Dogs' including Governor Zell Miller, Secretary of State, and later U.S. Senator Max Cleland and even now, living in DeKalb County, where elected Republicans basically do not exist, I support, contribute and have many more Democratic Party yard signs than GOP, and Democratic incumbents as longtime friends.
Reaching voting and college age in time for the Presidential Election of 1980, I was looking at the then-choice of incumbent President Jimmy Carter, and the challenger, California Governor Ronald Reagan.
Reagan began public life as a Democrat and supported many Democratic candidates and causes. During the 1950s and Reagan's tenure as host of the General Electric Playhouse, his politics began a move towards the GOP and the presidency of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Reagan would later campaign for Vice-President Richard Nixon in 1960. In 1962, Reagan was dropped by G.E., and he officially declared as a Republican, California was then still a two-party state, and in 1967 he became California’s GOP Governor.
Carter had been a lifelong Democrat, Governor of Georgia and had a track record as President which included an economy in shambles, 14 percent mortgage loan interest rates, the Iranian Hostage crisis, and an inability to deliver major legislative victories, despite his party controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress.
I voted for Reagan. As a college student, I joined the College Republicans and served a couple of years as Vice-President, one of those with a fellow named Ralph Reed as our President. Prior to graduating, I worked as a volunteer on the gubernatorial campaign of State Senator Bob Bell in 1982. Bell lost badly to State Rep. and later two-term Governor Joe Frank Harris.
I worked for several years in the media before returning to our State Capitol and stints working in communications roles for Max Cleland and then Zell Miller. While in the Miller Administration, I received a call from State Senator Paul Coverdell, then U.S. Peace Corps Director for President George H. W. Bush. Coverdell was returning to Georgia to challenge Democratic incumbent U.S. Senator Wyche Fowler for his Senate seat. Coverdell would overcome being tremendously out-spent and after four elections in one year, narrowly best Fowler in Georgia's first U.S. Senate runoff.
But now thankfully, the last time I attended a National GOP function was covering the second Inauguration of George W. Bush in Washington, during January 2005. I have not attended a Georgia GOP Convention since 1998, and I will mention that each of Georgia's last three Republican Governors have lowered that as a calendar priority after either being censured or reprimanded by their own party during prior state conventions.
The Georgia GOP Convention in Columbus earlier this month, which featured former President Donald J. Trump as a speaker, did not include appearances by Georgia's Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, or Insurance Commissioner, all of whom are Republicans.
Though I have met newly elected GOP Chair, Josh McKoon, a former State Senator, and have respect for some of his work in the State Senate, I don't have much hope for this version of the GOP increasing its relevance. I am a non-confirmed Catholic and Christian, but I have never believed that an intersection should exist between my faith and my politics, and the party today seems focused more on issues of social conservatism such as further restrictions on abortion and reproductive rights, or potentially banning books in school libraries and a variety of litmus tests for party membership.
Don't get me wrong, Democrats, in a column for another day, are making an equally zany surge to the left, but at least they seem to 'get' the concept of the more the merrier and a patchwork of different minorities working together on certain issues and against a common enemy.
I remain optimistic that escalating legal challenges for Mr. Trump as well as current President Joe Biden will prevent a 2024 grudge rematch. But that said, if Team Red wants to win, they need to learn again how to include, and not simply exclude. There are simply not enough right-wing nut jobs or arch-conservative churches to win elections in most states, let alone carry the nation. Today's GOP, the GOP of yesteryear could kick your ass and still have time to host a community benefit and do some nonprofit work before dinner. You are serving up your own defeat with this current trajectory. Bon Appetit!
