<![CDATA[My Site - Timmer\'s Columns]]>Fri, 25 Nov 2022 06:33:43 -0500Weebly<![CDATA[This Republican Will Vote for Any Democrat, Even a Yellow Dog]]>Mon, 06 Jul 2020 20:58:19 GMThttps://www.tworiverspublicaffairs.com/timmers-columns/this-republican-will-vote-for-any-democrat-even-a-yellow-dogA GOP insider is fed up with Trump enablers
PUBLISHED ON MEDIUM POLITICS
​***
It used to be said that many Democratic voters, especially in the South, would choose a “yellow dog” before casting a ballot for a Republican. The term originated in the late 1800s. It didn’t matter who the candidate was or what they actually sought to achieve in office. They only thing that mattered was they were a Democrat and not a godforsaken Republican. I suppose that describes me now.

That’s not a small thing to say.

Supporting Democrats goes against my political DNA. I’ve advised and directed hundreds of Republican legislative, congressional, statewide campaigns — including presidential campaigns. I was the executive director of the Michigan Republican Party for many years and operated at the highest levels of the Republican National Committee. Yet after 30 years earning my living in Republican politics, a Democratic candidate needs to demonstrate just one thing to win my vote — a pulse.
​I realized this last November while watching returns in the Louisiana governor’s race, hoping that Democrat John Bel Edwards would win re-election. I had the same desire for the gubernatorial election in Kentucky and the battle for control of the Virginia Legislature earlier in November. I never would have considered voting for a Democrat before Donald Trump descended the elevator to declare his candidacy and gave rise to MAGAnization of the GOP. He was ‘nails on a chalkboard’ to me from the get-go.

Like most, I didn’t take Trump seriously until he had already essentially captured the nomination. Even then I couldn’t foresee any path to victory for him, let alone one that ran through Michigan. I was one of more than 75,000 Michigan voters who showed up to vote in November 2016 but did not vote for any candidate for president (and Trump won the state by less than 11,000 votes) because I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Hillary Clinton.

It’s not that I’m particularly noble, brave, or woke. But I am unwilling to jettison the ideals that made me a Republican or abjectly debase myself to win elections, cling to power, or appease those who expect fealty to an individual above all else. As a young man, I was drawn to politics and public service because ideals mattered to me. Somewhere along the way winning became more important. Trump’s candidacy and election clarified my conscience. My values and ideology hadn’t changed, but what I was willing to tolerate to further them had; and I could never again put any person or party above standing for what is right and combatting what is wrong. There was no way I was going to accept or vote for someone I considered to be an incompetent, ignorant, cruel, corrupt, vainglorious, dotard simply because he called himself a Republican and happened to emerge the victor in the nomination battle. Nor would I be willing to support those who enabled him. Very few in the GOP can say the same.

Republicans have abandoned the ideological underpinnings that bolstered four decades of conservative dominance in American governance. The party that espoused the Balanced Budget Amendment has presided over the largest explosion of the federal deficit and debt in our history. The party of Reagan and George HW Bush that presided over the disappearance of the Soviet Union and won the Cold War now cozies up to anti-American despots and favors retrenchment in world affairs. The party that ran on a mantra of personal responsibility and “character counts” now says that the ends justify any means.

If these past four years have demonstrated anything, it’s that Republicans will accept staggering levels of ineptitude, malfeasance, corruption, and buffoonery, provided the offender belongs to the GOP. Rule of law and the restraints of Constitutional boundaries be damned. On top of the fiscal irresponsibility of deficits and debt, the Republican-controlled Congress fecklessly ceded Trump the power to launch trade wars that have cost American consumers billions and led to a spike in farm bankruptcies. They’re allowing Trump to siphon millions from the U.S. Treasury and from foreign interests directly into his personal businesses. They’ve become willing accomplices who’ve aided and abetted Trump’s direct assault on the rule-of-law, disdain for Congressional power and oversight mandated by the Constitution and legitimized his impeachable extortion of a foreign ally and the subsequent cover-up.

Then came the COVID-19 Pandemic. No President could have stopped it. Any President, other than Trump, would have reacted more quickly and demonstrated more competence. Tens of thousands of American lives could have been saved, along with millions of jobs and small businesses.

Now Trump is stoking dangerous seeds of discontent among Americans frustrated with stay-at-home orders and temporary business closures. We’ve seen ill-advised rallies where attendees ignorantly gambled exposure to the coronavirus. Worse, they’ve then recklessly risked carrying the virus to communities and people previously unaffected by this plague.

Elected Republicans and party leaders share as much blame for Trump’s abuses of power as he does himself. He couldn’t do it without them. They could have held him accountable at any time, on any offense — but they haven’t. Their ideals are fungible. They are craven and servile. They are also foolish and naïve. They fear a mean tweet more than the consequences of today or the judgment of history.

You’d think self-preservation, if not a sense of principle, honor, or duty, might motivate party elites to restrain Trump’s vice and perversion of the office he holds. Yet they’ve illogically ignored that as well, losing staggering numbers of GOP officeholders in elections since 2016. They’re immune to common sense. Inoculated against reality. Impervious to facts.

They know better. They’ve thrown all-in for a vainglorious dotard whose incompetence and ham-fisted greed and dishonesty pose an existential threat to the American system, not merely the Republican Party. The contempt I hold for them is far greater than my loathing of Trump. He never was better, but they once were.

I have not become a Democrat. I do not support them on significant policy matters. I don’t think they’re particularly courageous or virtuous, or that federal, state, or local governments would necessarily operate better if they were in charge. I think many of them would act as dishonorably and ridiculously partisan-hypocritical as the Republicans have if the shoe were on the other foot. But for now, Democrats do not support Donald Trump, and that makes us temporary allies, issue disagreements notwithstanding.

Our system presents a binary choice: Trump and today’s altered version of Republicans, or the Democrats. So, I will support any Democrat — even a yellow dog — against any Republican who supports Trump. No argument to the contrary matters.

Higher taxes? Don’t care
Drunken sailor spending? Already underway
Appointment of liberal judges? Don’t care
Lax immigration policy? Don’t care
Medicare for all? Don’t care
Gun grabbing? Don’t care
You get the point…Don’t waste your breath

I still do care about conservative ideals, just not the bastardized form of what passes for conservatism these days. Politics is like nature; It abhors a vacuum. Our system begs for factions on the center-left and center-right who compete in the arena of policy and politics, not whatever the hell we have today. I’m willing to re-engage in that battle eventually, hopefully to build a new party actually based on American conservatism, once the mutations caused by this faux version are eradicated. In the meantime, bring on 2020 — and bring on victory by the Democrats, even the yellow dogs.

Jeff Timmer is a political consultant and strategist. He was Executive Director of the Michigan Republican Party and is now an erstwhile GOPer. Follow him on Twitter @jefftimmer
]]><![CDATA[Goldilocks and the Americans Willing to Tolerate Police Who Murder People]]>Mon, 29 Jun 2020 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tworiverspublicaffairs.com/timmers-columns/goldilocks-and-the-americans-willing-to-tolerate-police-who-murder-peopleA white guy’s primer for other whites in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder
PUBLISHED ON IN THE MICHIGAN ADVANCE
***
Listen up, Goldilocks. No one has the time or patience for your moral relativism and false-equivalencies bullshit anymore. Too hard. Too soft. Too damn bad. ‘Just right’ is for children’s stories. This is the real world. Please stop with the “it’s horrible a defenseless black man was murdered by the police, but these disruptive and angry demonstrations aren’t helping and need to stop.” Try instead, “It’s too bad these disruptive and angry demonstrations are necessary, but we need to finally stop the systemic problem of murder and abuse of blacks by the police.”

You don’t get to decide how black and brown people, or white people who support them, protest injustice and combat racism. It’s time you grow up and realize you don’t make those rules. It’s not about your comfort or contentment. Your role now is to listen, learn, try to understand, and perhaps join them — not to set the parameters for people of color to accommodate you as they demand cultural change and legal justice. If you can manage that, things can get better. If you can’t, buckle up sister, because it’s gonna be a rough road ahead.
Why call you Goldilocks? Well, for instance, you got your lily-white panties in a bunch when Colin Kaepernick, players across the NFL, and others decided to passively take a knee during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner. That sent you, and all the Karens and Chads and Donalds and Pences, out there, into a jingoistic frenzy.

Kaepernick and his compatriots aimed to peacefully, but visibly, send a message they would no longer stand for systemic racism and mistreatment of people of color in the United States of America. “No, no, no,” said you. That kneeling dissent was “too disrupting, too unseemly, too uncomfortable, and too unpatriotic.”

You felt the need to stress that you supported those people willing to protest injustice, just not protests that you have to actually see or hear anyone talk about, or God forbid, any demonstration that might finally alter the status quo. Egad. You prefer your protests served with a pinky up.

Kaepernick’s symbolic kneeling gave you, Goldilocks, a bonus opportunity to bastardize the national anthem’s purpose by conflating it with respecting and honoring the service of veterans and active-duty military — instead of the ‘liberty and justice for all’ ideal that America purports to stand for. Voila, Kap and his supporters became un-American pinkos. They wanted our soldiers to die and to allow marauding caravans of jobless foreigners to sneak across our borders and eat our children.

Your message, Goldilocks, was that we should move along and find a method, time, and place for protesting that would be more palatable to you.

Fast forward to 2020 (and past the many police murders of defenseless black and brown people since) and the protests that have erupted in cities across the nation following the murder of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers: You don’t like these protests either, Goldilocks. You stress again how you support protests and protesters, just not this kind and these ones. This kind of civil disobedience is “too passionate.”

You and your cozy suburban neighbors now wax nostalgic with each other and your parents on Facebook and Zoom about Dr. Martin Luther King and the 1960s Civil Rights protests. “By Moses, that’s when people knew how to protest. That’s the way ‘they’ should be griping about things in 2020.” Never mind seven or eight out of 10 white Americans in the 1960s disapproved of MLK, his associates, and their tactics, the way you disagree with protesters today. Also, whistling right on past the fact that King and the Civil Rights and Voting Acts took place more than 50 years ago and we’ve been dealing with cases like that of George Floyd continually since.

In the most Wonder Bread of whiteness way, Goldilocks, you’ve made it perfectly clear that there is no discord or demonstration that you’ll find ‘just right.’

I’ll type this part slowly so that maybe you’ll be able to follow along: It’s. Not. Your. Call.

You don’t get to decide. No one needs to appease you. Disruptive change requires disruption. Disobedience and commotion are hallmarks of fundamental cultural change — and of systemic changes to laws, the judiciary, and even governments — because those who control the levers of power are inherently resistant to said changes. Funny how that works.

***
You may ask, “Who are you, Jeff Timmer, to lecture me, Goldilocks? Aren’t you a five-decade carrier of your white man card? Haven’t you been part of the ‘establishment,’ even (gasp) a longtime Republican and gerrymanderer?”

Yessiree. Guilty as charged.

I’m also a father of five, including two sons. One of my boys is 19 years old. He resembles me quite a bit. My other son is 17 years old and looks nothing like me, but he does resemble men like George Floyd or Philando Castille.

One of my sons runs an exponentially higher risk than the other of being killed by law enforcement every time he drives his car or goes somewhere with friends.

This scares the shit out of me. It also pisses me off. I’m not willing to accept it or tolerate it. I’m not the least bit concerned that people seeking to change it cause you heartburn and discomfort.

Having a black son doesn’t make me better than other white people. But it sure as hell has graced me with a different perspective and understanding than I had a short six years ago when my son left his home in Addis Ababa to move to Portland, Michigan. For those unfamiliar, Portland is a small town with about 6,000 area residents and about a 30-minute drive to Grand Rapids or Lansing. It’s a diverse town full of Germans and lots of other kinds of white people.

So here’s my advice Goldilocks, Karens, Chads, Trumps, Pences, and the rest of you who think you’re entitled to establish the rules about how this game of social change works: It’s waaaaay past time you open your friggin eyes and minds to the reality that you’re no longer dealing the playing cards to the black and brown people in Michigan, Minnesota, Georgia, Washington D.C., Dallas, Los Angeles or anywhere across our fruited plains. Whites will soon be a demographic minority in the United States. Whites who think like you already are.

So, prepare yourself to sit in chairs or sleep in beds that are either too hard or too soft for the foreseeable future, so long as you cling to your delusional notions of getting to decide how this change will happen. It’ll never so much as approach being ‘just right’ for you until you manage to do that. If you ever manage to do that.
​
Jeff Timmer is a political consultant and strategist. He was Executive Director of the Michigan Republican Party and is now an erstwhile GOPer. He is also the father of multi-racial children. Follow him on Twitter @jefftimmer
]]><![CDATA[The GOP Succumbs to Stockholm Syndrome]]>Thu, 18 Jun 2020 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tworiverspublicaffairs.com/timmers-columns/the-gop-succumbs-to-stockholm-syndromeWarren Zevon, Patty Hearst, and Marshall Applewhite help us understand how the Republicans have lost their stinkin' minds.
PUBLISHED IN THE MICHIGAN ADVANCE
​***
Warren Zevon wrote the lyric “Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland’s Thompson gun and bought it,” in a 1978 song, referencing the kidnapping and radicalization of the heiress by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA).

If Zevon were alive today he might update that lyric to read, “The GOP read the worst of Donald’s Twitter thumb and no one fought it.” The $64,000 question is why have they so entirely acceded to Trump’s MAGA cult?
No business or organization would tolerate Donald Trump’s daily behavior within the ranks of their employees or membership, let alone its leadership. Yet, since the moment he descended the Jethro Bodine golden escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy, Trump has engaged in an unceasing assault on traditional American legal and constitutional (let alone Republican) values, conservative thought, and the basic norms of the way an adult human, not just the president, acts. And now nearly half of Americans say, “Meh.”

Virtually everyone who was a Republican prior to spring 2016, whether in the U.S. Senate, Congress, governors’ mansions, state legislatures or party meetings across America, thought Trump to be a performer escaped from a circus sideshow. Nontraditional GOP voters were propelling him to the nomination. By the summer of 2016, real Republicans still considered him largely radioactive bat guano with less than zero chance to defeat Hillary Clinton.

Candidates in close races were unwilling to shake his tiny, tiny hand or be seen campaigning with him. The entire party ran for the lifeboats when Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape grabbed the news cycle by the genitalia. Trump commanded no respect. No one valued his political antennae or instincts. No one feared him; what they feared was being associated with him.

Then the political campaigns gods pulled the ultimate prank. Trump won and the sudden shift in the Republican Party that registered on the Richter scale was felt as far away as Moscow and Beijing. He was now their guy, even if they weren’t quite his. They’d keep him on the straight and narrow. 

Such silly Republicans; they still had no idea who they were dealing with. Trump was Trump and would always be Trump. They were not equal to the task. They were, however, unwitting dupes already succumbing to the narcissistic sway of a Fifth Avenue Marshall Applewhite. This was spinelessness at worst; delusional scoliosis at best.

His instability, ignorance and impetuosity upended global markets and security alliances that have provided the relative predictability required for the health of our economy and national security since World War II. His vainglorious and loutish behavior drove every woman not named “Karen” from the Republican Party and brought a Democratic tsunami that tore through Capitol Hill, state capitals, county courthouses and city halls in the November 2018 elections — sweeping thousands of GOP office holders out to sea.

The historic trouncing suffered in the 2018 election should have been a wakeup call for the GOP to confront Trump’s personal toxicity before it subsumed the Party. Yet, even after leading them off a cliff, there was nary a peep of critique from 96% of Republicans. They doubled down on devotion to Trump instead of pausing to take stock of the perilous territory they’d followed him to. They filled their pockets with quarters, laced up their brand-new Nikes, and awaited the sweet release of the mothership’s arrival.

GOPers acted like they’d been with Trump all along. They justified his actions, and their support, by cherry picking policies or outcomes they agreed with. Republicans attempted to smooth Trump’s unsettling behaviors or by deflection — drawing false equivalencies about political opponents. 

“But judges,” seemed to satisfy many. “Hoax. Witch hunt. Fake news,” became common refrains. “But Hillary, but Obama, but Pelosi, etc.,” also became go-to GOP justification for Trump’s latest outrageous deed or screed du jour. Patty Hearst’s grandfather — a patron saint of yellow journalism — would no doubt love the impact Fox News and conservative talk radio has had on today’s politics, culture, and Trump’s cult of aggrieved minions, much in the way the SLA got inside the head of his granddaughter.

The entire year of 2019 seems lost in a long, continual blur of Russian collusion, Mueller Report, obstruction of justice, Ukraine extortion (“You better stay away from him, he’ll tear your lungs out, Jim. That call was perfect,” to again paraphrase Zevon), White House coverups, and impeachment.

 To be fair, those are some pretty damn serious matters to have occupied our bandwidth. Through that protracted and eventful year, though, like Patty Hearst, even the few remaining reluctant Republicans demonstrated all the signs of Stockholm Syndrome by increasingly identifying with their captor despite the growing perils of their situation. Party adherents metaphorically picked up guns, like she did, changed their names to Tania, and headed off to rob a bank.

That has been the most startling aspect of Trumpism — how otherwise decent Republicans with long-standing reputations for political normalcy and measured behavior became cravenly submissive to Trump despite the daily deluge of corruption, incompetence, ignorance and buffoonery; along with the moral, ethical and policy hazards that accompany it. 

Trump never was better. They once were.

Now in 2020, his incompetence, dithering and reckless stupidity have led to the avoidable deaths of more than 100,000 Americans, with tens of thousands more to come, and a gigantic smoking crater in the American economy where 40 million jobs and millions of businesses that existed in March are now possibly extinct a mere 90 days later. Still, his Svengali control of the GOP remains firm. Trump is now the Republican Party and those in the Republican Party are now Trump’s — minds, bodies and souls.

Republican candidates at every level of government, in nearly every corner of the United States, may also be facing a looming impact crater extinction event in November. Though still far from certain, many reliable indicators of election outcomes such as presidential job approval, the country’s right track-wrong track, the generic Congressional ballot preference, and nearly every measurable economic gauge point to an election climate more closely resembling the blue wave of 2018 than the nip-and-tuck closeness of 2016.

January through May seem to have been 2020’s shot. The chaser is the alleged murder of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers. Even though it’s been nearly six decades since the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the assassination of Martin Luther King, these incidents continue to happen regularly. We’ve had an African American president. Still racism permeates America. Floyd’s death has now sparked three weeks of massive protests across the entire country. Americans of all colors and backgrounds have exploded into the streets with a passionate and historic, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore,” attitude and show no signs of slowing.

Trump’s response to the civil — and mostly peaceful — unrest has, not surprisingly, been to amp up his divisive and racially tinged rhetoric. He’s opted for full-throated jingoistic militarism (and even the ham-handed theocratic imagery with the Bible in front of St. John’s Church) to stoke the partisan divisions that have toxified our politics into an all-out culture war. While most of America is outraged, the MAGA-Republican cult is eating it up.

We still have the better part of five months until Election Day. As hellish as the first five months of 2020 have been, there’s great probability the next five will bring heightened division, strife and unrest as Trump begins to feel increasingly cornered. Emotional instability and desperate fear are a toxic cocktail.

Nothing to date has cracked Trump’s confounding grip on his adopted and captive political party. Given the torrent of ineptitude, corruption, and lunacy they’ve cultishly come to embrace thus far, nothing seems likely to break the spell and awaken the suppressed courage and moral compasses of Republicans, or even trigger their instinct for self-preservation. A cult has gotta cult. So be it.

Warren Zevon also wrote a song called Hostage with a line that goes, “I can see me bound and gagged, dragged behind the clown-mobile.” Whether their sycophancy has been a willful choice or the result of brainwashing by the hypnotic Bozo, it’s increasingly likely the ensnared Republicans running in 2020 will be following Trump’s clown car right over the cliff this November. Even then, Trump’s very own Symbionese Liberation Army is likely to feel hostility and aggrieved outrage rather than coming to their senses. 

Goodbye, Tania.

***
Jeff Timmer is a political consultant and Warren Zevon fan. He was executive director of the Michigan Republican Party and is now an erstwhile GOPer. Twitter: @jefftimmer.
]]><![CDATA[Michigan May be a Nightmare for the GOP]]>Wed, 17 Jun 2020 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.tworiverspublicaffairs.com/timmers-columns/michigan-may-be-a-nightmare-for-the-gopThe state party’s transformation didn’t start with Trump. But his weak polling could plunge MIGOP into wrack and ruin.
PUBLISHED IN THE BULWARK 
​***
Simon & Garfunkel sang “Michigan seems like a dream to me now” as they went off to look for America. That lyric could well be running through the noggins of those in the Trump campaign and the Republican apparatus come fall, as they hope to reprise Trump’s shocking victory in the state in 2016.

A state that was on very few people’s radar in 2016 has become the center of the political universe this year, as our governor, Gretchen Whitmer, feuds with the president and as legions of political reporters travel to our state’s diners in an attempt to understand what they missed the last time around.
The problem with this renewed focus on Michigan? There’s not much evidence that the hype is real. As it stands today, Trump’s 2016 victory is looking more and more like a fluke, with every intervening election and the 2020 polls looking like a MAGA nightmare. The result is a situation where political campaigns and journalists are fighting the last war out of fear of being embarrassed again, rather than looking at the battlefield as it exists today.

If Donald Trump does win reelection, it is unlikely that his path will again run through my home state.

Let’s look at why that is.

For about as long as I’ve been practicing politics here—which is to say, since 1990—Michigan has tilted blue in presidential years. However, if you look at its voting patterns in the right light and from just the right angle, a brilliant shade of purple is revealed, marbled with red and blue hues.

After George H.W. Bush easily won Michigan in 1988, no other Republican even really tried. The younger Bush waged contested battles in the state as a diversionary tactic to distract Al Gore and John Kerry from neighboring Ohio. (Note: Bush garnered more total votes in 2004 while losing Michigan than Trump did when he won here in 2016.) Bill Clinton won big in both 1992 and 1996, Gore and Kerry both carried Michigan relatively comfortably, and Barack Obama did too, twice—even against native Michigander Mitt Romney, the son of a onetime governor, George Romney.

There is a bipolar aspect to Michigan’s voting patterns between presidential election years and gubernatorial ones. Beginning in the early 1960s with Gov. George Romney’s three consecutive election victories and counting through the turn of the century, Republicans held the governor’s mansion in Lansing in nine out of eleven elections. But in the five gubernatorial elections since 2000, Democrats have held a slight lead over the GOP: three wins to two.

Republicans have also controlled the state senate since 1984, after future three-term governor John Engler (1991-2003), then the minority leader, adroitly orchestrated the recall of two Democratic senators and voters then replaced them with Republicans in special elections. The Michigan Senate is elected entirely in non-presidential years. The Republicans’ iron grip on the chamber had grown to a veto-proof supermajority of 27-11 before the 2018 anti-Trump midterm cost the GOP five seats.

Republicans have held control of both houses of the Michigan legislature for 22 of the past 30 years—also having a GOP governor in 16 of those 22 years. (I played a significant role in the drawing of both the legislative and congressional maps adopted in 2001 and 2011.) But Michigan Republicans have had little success electing one of their own to the U.S. Senate, winning only one election (that of future energy secretary Spencer Abraham in 2000) since 1972.

Much of these off-year and localized GOP gains were offset following Trump’s victory in 2016. In the 2018 midterms, Democrats captured all the statewide offices for the first time since 1986, flipped two congressional seats, netted five seats in both chambers of the state legislature, and gained scores of county and local offices. Traditional GOP strongholds in suburban Detroit and Grand Rapids shifted to the Democrats. Gretchen Whitmer, a former state legislator, bested then-Attorney General Bill Schuette in a landslide, even winning Kent County (Grand Rapids), which had voted for a Democrat for governor just once since the founding of the Republican party in 1856. Rejection of Trump and Trumpism by Michigan voters in the 2018 midterm election left the Republicans at their lowest ebb in the state since 1986, though the GOP retained slim control of both chambers of the legislature.

***
Part of the reason that Michigan Republicans were able to have success in the past in this blue-leaning state is the ability to attract suburban swing voters with candidates known for personal decency and a willingness to cross the aisle. (It’s underappreciated on this count that Trump ran as an “Art of the Deal” heterodox Republican in 2016 and that, in some polls, voters reported perceiving him as more moderate than Hillary Clinton, something that wasn’t appreciated in the national media.)

Among the Michigan Republicans known for their crossover appeal, Gov. George Romney was vaulted to national front pages, like his son Mitt was last week, when in 1965 he walked with black civil rights protesters in Detroit. George Romney’s successor, Gov. Bill Milliken, U.S. Sen. Bob Griffin, and Congressman and National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Guy Vander Jagt had similarly deserved reputations for being tough politicians and gracious men. The Michigan Republican Party during this era was chaired by figures like Elly Peterson, the first woman in America to head a Republican state party organization, and Mel Larsen, whose name is part of Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.

And the era of pragmatic Republican conservatism that John Engler ushered in dominated Michigan government and politics from about 1990 until the rise of the Tea Party.

***
The year 2010 was a foreboding one for Republicans in Michigan and nationally. It just wasn’t fully realized at the time. Running with the slogan “One Tough Nerd,” venture capitalist and former Gateway Computers CEO Rick Snyder emerged from a tough four-way primary against well-heeled establishment Republicans, including a retiring congressman, the state’s attorney general, and the elected sheriff of a county with a population of 1.2 million people. Snyder was the anti-politician, but quite different from Trump. Snyder was seen as civil, non-partisan, honest, and competent (and some would argue with more liquid capital than Trump).

Snyder’s ascent was concurrent with the rise of the Tea Party. Talk about apples and oranges. Like evangelicals two decades prior, many new activists appeared at GOP meetings across Michigan, ultimately making up significant portions of those chosen to be delegates at the Republican nominating convention that selected Snyder’s running mate and the nominees for attorney general and secretary of state. The Tea Partiers were feeling their oats and decided to flex their muscles by thwarting Snyder’s preferred choice for lieutenant governor, little-known two-term state representative Brian Calley.

The running-mate selection, typically a perfunctory voice vote by delegates at the convention to affirm the selection of the candidate for governor, was thrown into chaos when Calley’s nomination was loudly jeered by naysayers, who then moved for a tallied vote instead of acclamation. The party muckety-mucks behind the convention stage curtain shared a collective “Oh fuck” moment and then set about putting the genie back in the bottle. Threats were made, favors promised, pants shat, commitments exchanged, and ultimately deals were solidified and Calley was nominated. The Snyder-Calley ticket went on to a landslide victory in November.

The incident laid bare the divisions in the party that had been growing and lurking during Democrat Jennifer Granholm’s two terms (2003-2011). In 2012, racist homophobe Dave Agema defeated incumbent Saul Anuzis (now head of 60 Plus, the GOP’s counter to the AARP), for a coveted seat on the Republican National Committee. The MIGOP state committee, essentially a board of directors, became populated with miscreants and several actual convicted felons, including one who served time for extortion and conspiracy, another for financial fraud that included theft from his mother, still another mini-Bernie Madoff felon who was ordered to pay $285 million in restitution at his sentencing, and yet another, this one elected a party vice-chair, who had been convicted after shooting a man and also previously faced two counts of assault with intent to commit murder in a separate incident.

Tea Party gadfly Todd Courser went on in 2014 to win election to the Michigan House of Representatives where his service ended in less than a year: He was expelled following a bizarre sex scandal that gained national attention when Courser illegally used his staff to create rumors of his involvement with a male prostitute to distract from an affair he was having with a female GOP state representative. Courser was charged with four felonies, tried on two, and ultimately pleaded to a misdemeanor and lost his law license.

Not every up-and-coming figure in the state GOP was quite this bad, of course, but in the years after 2010, the state party came to be defined not by its sensible conservative moderation but by its unhinged populism and ethically challenged characters.

***
Polling through mid-2020 has shown Trump consistently trailing Joe Biden in the mitten state, including a survey released last week showing Trump trailing Biden by a 15-point margin (50 to 35 percent).

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has only increased her popularity. Her approval numbers during the COVID-19 crisis, which has hit Michigan disproportionately hard, have remained in the mid-60s, while Trump’s have been mired in the low 40s. Whitmer gave her support to Biden at a pivotal moment in advance of his win over Bernie Sanders in Michigan and she is included in the speculation about Biden’s choice of a running mate. While Whitmer won’t be on the ballot in Michigan this year (unless Biden picks her), she’s in much better position to sway swing voters up and down the ballot than Trump or any Republican is.

These disastrous top-of-the-ticket numbers are sure to be an anchor for Republicans down-ballot—suggesting that the 2020 election will continue to hollow out the party in the state. For example, Republicans have an exemplary candidate challenging Democratic freshman U.S. Senator Gary Peters. John James, a black 39-year-old Iraq War veteran Army combat helicopter pilot, is the CEO of an international logistics company with annual revenue exceeding $100 million. James ran against three-term Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2018, losing a surprisingly close race and running well ahead of the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate. James has tried to thread the needle of not alienating Trump and Trumpists while also endeavoring to not repel college-educated white voters who increasingly see Trump as less desirable than chlamydia. This needle is proving unthreadable: The most recent poll shows James trailing Peters 48 to 32 percent.

Freshman Democratic Reps. Elissa Slotkin (who defeated an incumbent Republican) and Haley Stevens (who flipped a GOP open seat) both face weak opponents and are likely to coast to re-election in their suburban Detroit districts.

In the southwest corner of Michigan, bordering South Bend, Indiana—where the Chicago TV market penetrates—moderate Republican Fred Upton, first elected in 1986, faces extinction at the hands of Democratic state representative Jon Hoadley. Upton eked out the narrowest victory of his career in 2018 against a relatively weak and little-known opponent.

Democrats also seem poised to break the GOP’s ten-year hold on the Michigan House of Representatives (state senators are not on the ballot this year) and either hold gains they made at the county and local levels in 2018 or add to them. Michigan adopted a new independent citizens’ commission to conduct redistricting after the 2020 census and the Democrats may well enter 2022 in their strongest political position since the mid-1980s to seize even more congressional seats and capture control of the Michigan Senate for the first time since 1984.
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Most Republicans in Michigan seem oblivious to this reality.
What they have in front of them is the opportunity to do something pretty rare in politics, make a bold move that is both smart politically and the ethical thing to do. In this case: throw Donald Trump and his 35 percent ballot number overboard to try to save themselves.

There have been more than enough bright neon signs flashing out their warnings that a big blue wave has been forming. John James flashing 32 percent might as well be posted in Times Square.

But the message isn’t breaking through.

Instead, inexplicably, the MIGOP cult continues to bow and pray to the great orange god they made.

And so the sound most likely to emit from Republicans on the night of November 3, will not be silence—but a loud and collective wailing of defeat and despair.

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Jeff Timmer is a political consultant. He was executive director of the Michigan Republican Party and is now an erstwhile GOPer. Twitter: @jefftimmer.
]]><![CDATA[The Founding Fathers Ask Us: “WTF?”]]>Fri, 07 Feb 2020 05:00:00 GMThttps://www.tworiverspublicaffairs.com/timmers-columns/the-founding-fathers-ask-us-wtfRead what they have to say in their own words — sort of.
PUBLISHED IN HOW PANTS WORK, A MEDIUM.COM HUMOR PUBLICATION
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​Our Dearest Progeny,
It’s us. The Founding Fathers. Ye know, the blokes with the powdered wigs and knee-breeches. We’re breaching (see what we did there?) the time-space continuum to implore you lot to stop buggering up the American system.

We wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and other historical cack. We also put our pence where our pens were (no pun intended). We risked our very arses, along with our lives and fortunes, to unite the Thirteen Colonies, struggle to win the war for independence from Great Britain, and build a durable government framework for the new United States of America for ourselves and our posterity (that’d be ye lot).

Pat on the back time: We were bloody awesome. The British were being minging dicks. We had to chuse to accept tyranny or battle it. Some tossers said, “Ooh, it’ll be too arduous and perilous, can’t we just keep the King?” However, we chose liberty and fought for it — and we won.

Then we established a republican government incorporating the ideals of personal freedom, individual liberty, and democratic expression where people bestowed limited powers upon the state, not the other way around (though we did screw the pooch on that slavery and 3/5ths business; and with wommin voting). No one had ever attempted such a government before. No one has replicated one since. It worked reasonably well, with hiccups here and there, for 240 years. These United States became the most desirable, prosperous, and powerful nation in the history of this Earth.

Until you bloody gits bollixed it all up.
After all the shite we endured to forge it for you; after all the painstaking consideration, contemplation, and deliberation that went into the design; after all that had transpired during the nearly quarter millennium since we did; you wankers decided it was time to take a pish on the entire bloomin’ design and all it has stood for and achieved.

You couldn’t bring yourselves to select a skullduggerous womyn to be President, so you decided instead to chuse a vainglorious numpty poxy rotter.

We ask: “How’s that working for you, ye gorblimey buggers?”

We suppose we cannot saddle all of you with the blame, after all, it was us who established the Electoral College (we had good reason and stand by it still), allowing a minority of you to chuse the gibbering barking mad knobbing twatwaffle.

We think it noble that the United States has grown to evangelize liberty, individual rights, world trade, free markets, and established an order of global security. But in less than a triennium, the bloody prat you inserted into the executive mansion has done more to destroy America’s honor and integrity and to diminish her interests abroad than the dastardliest of foes could ever have envisaged.

He has abused his office, received forbidden emoluments from foreign governments and the United States Treasury, ignored the express Constitutional powers of Congress, obstructed justice, and conspired with foreign powers for his advantage and to the detriment of the United States.

If only we had thought of a remedy if such malfeasance were to occur…oh, that’s right. We DID!

“The House of Representatives … shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” We included these bloody words in the Constitution for this very reason. Then we added, “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments,” along with the ins and outs of the conduct and limitations of such a trial.

We INTENDED that these remedies WOULD overturn the previous election. We didn’t care if the offenses or removal procedures occurred during the first month, the last month, or any time in between of a president’s term. We didn’t, however, account for the House to be populated with an entire faction of servile curs, or the Senate commanded by manky arseholes.

The House of Representatives has thrice previously undertaken impeachment proceedings, and two of those three occasions were dubious. Yet, both of those proceeded to trial in the Senate in which the scoundrels were acquitted. This fourth case, for which we write to you today, could not have been a more compelling event for impeachment and conviction. Your Senators failed to remove the fanny-grabbing dullard who sits in the executive mansion. They have buggered the legitimacy of the Constitutional Republic we gave to you.

Your job now is to do what the mangy curs in the Senate lacked the stones to do; elect a new President — anyone with a pulse will do. Chuse Senators who have some bollocks (even the wommin among them) and even a jot of respect for themselves and the Constitution. Get it right. Remove the vermin there today before it’s too late to salvage all that we bequeathed to ye.

Be we forever yours,

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and a bunch of guys whose names you do not know
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