On Tuesday night, a victorious Brian Kemp took to the podium in Athens, Georgia, after defeating Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle in that state's Republican gubernatorial primary runoff. In Kemp’s remarks, he thanked his family, his supporters and President Donald Trump, who recently threw his weight behind Kemp, saying he was “tough on crime, strong on the border and illegal immigration.”
Kemp’s winning strategy was to position himself for months as a “politically incorrect Republican,” a slogan he tried to prove time and again as he aired bizarre television ads filled with gun fetishization and references to “illegal immigrants.” In one memorable commercial, Kemp brandished a shotgun while talking to “Jacob,” an actor portraying a young man interested in dating the candidate’s daughter. Another gained national attention when Kemp vamped in front of an explosion, cocked a shotgun while surrounded by an arsenal of weapons, wielded a chainsaw and then climbed into his “big truck,” which he claimed to own “just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take ‘em home myself.”
It’s easy to see why Kemp would earn Trump’s support. He’s a candidate straight from the president’s mold. His rhetoric is boldly offensive and his posturing so obvious it borders on self-parody. This fall's campaign in Georgia could well get disgusting and is certain to attract national attention. Kemp is now poised to face Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams, a progressive who stands on the precipice of being the first African-American woman ever to hold a state governorship.
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In his speech on Tuesday, Kemp drew the battle lines, consistently tying Abrams to former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, billionaire George Soros and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, whom Kemp claimed would somehow control Abrams if she were victorious. He characterized Abrams' supporters as “socialists” and “radical liberals” and also borrowed the president’s rhetoric as he claimed his campaign would have to take on “the fake news media machine.”
The contest between Kemp and Abrams was described by the Republican nominee as nothing short of a battle for “the soul of the state” of Georgia, a fight that would come down to Kemp taking on “Stacey Abrams and the Radical Left.”
These rhetorical tactics bear a striking resemblance to the attacks Donald Trump and his supporters have wielded over the past three years. In mentioning Abrams in the same breath as Clinton, Soros and Pelosi, Kemp is tying her to an allegedly massive liberal conspiracy that threatens to annihilate the very Constitution itself. Clinton has been positioned as the kingpin, so to speak, while Soros has consistently been fingered as the funder of efforts to destabilize governments around the world, and Pelosi has long been framed as the political operative who pulls the strings within the system.
This supposed "Deep State" conspiracy is the threat that keeps members of Trump’s base awake at night and searching through pages of cryptic internet forum posts in search of hidden meaning. In this alternate reality, the very safety of the country is teetering on the edge of an abyss too awful and frightful to even imagine. As a result, Republicans are consistently showing up at the polls to support the likes of Trump and Kemp and continually disavowing the appeals of progressives and the media.
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But what gets lost in this paranoid fever dream are threats to both the country and its citizens, crises that actually exist and could derail the wellbeing of both the people and the republic. It’s a show for the benefit of the party and the Trump movement, a smokescreen that hides the existence of real and present danger.
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Last Sunday I tuned into Sacha Baron Cohen’s new show "Who Is America?" and was greeted by a familiar face in Jason Spencer, a Georgia state representative from the 180 District, just down the road from where I live in Statesboro. Residents of this state are familiar with Spencer’s antics as he’s shown a penchant over his four terms for the dramatic, the controversial and the stupid.
The appearance on "Who Is America?" is one of the most calamitous things I’ve ever seen from a politician. Spencer, egged on by Cohen’s character (a supposed Israeli intelligence officer), films an “anti-terrorism video” in which he practices looking up Muslim women’s burqas, imitates an Asian person’s voice in a supremely racist way, screams racial slurs at the top of his voice, pulls down his pants in order to fend off an imagined attack and, after the final credits have rolled, simulates cutting off a Muslim man’s penis and utters another racial slur. It was disastrous and led to a statewide furor that resulted in Spencer's resignation from the Georgia legislature.
In the wake of the show, Spencer attempted to explain his actions by saying he was so afraid of terrorism that it impaired his judgment and allowed Cohen to manipulate him into behaving so disgustingly. Spencer’s career has been defined by his fear, however, as he’s attempted in the past to restrict Muslim women from wearing burqas. Recently Spencer was in the spotlight again for telling an African-American woman critical of Confederate statues that she might “go missing” in a swamp.
Spencer’s fear doesn’t just begin and end with racism though. Like many Republicans, Spencer was motivated by animus toward President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and fought hard in the Georgia legislature to block any attempt to fund the program. Spencer’s opposition was so fervent that when he lost the support of his Republican colleagues he called them traitors and “Benedict Arnolds.”
What’s ironic here is that Spencer’s deepest and darkest fears legitimately pale in comparison with the threats he refuses to see. Spencer was never in danger of falling victim to a terrorist attack, and the actions that brought his political career to an embarrassing end had more to do with his own internal prejudices than outside forces. However, the Affordable Care Act he raged so valiantly against has actually helped his constituents. Between 2013 and 2016, the uninsured population in Georgia has decreased by 29 percent and hundreds of thousands have benefited from increased coverage.
Similarly, Brian Kemp’s quest for boogeymen distracts from larger and much more pressing issues, some of which have been of his own making. In Kemp’s case, this occurred during his tenure as Georgia’s secretary of state during which several scandals and data breaches threatened the state’s voters. One security expert even detailed for Politico just how “uniquely vulnerable” Georgia’s voting records were and expressed shock at how easily the data could be accessed for nefarious purposes. This proved true: Millions of voters’ data were breached, and Kemp’s own office released voter information to 12 outside groups, including political organizations. Additionally, in another baffling incident, his office “lost” 40,000 voter registrations, the majority of them from people of color.
Famously, Kemp refused federal assistance for strengthening election security in Georgia, and publicly did so as concerns over Russian meddling clouded the electoral process’ validity. Kemp went a step further by questioning the Obama administration’s motives in seeking to secure elections, saying, “The question remains whether the federal government will subvert the Constitution to achieve the goal of federalizing elections under the guise of security.” On a similar note, Kemp has repeatedly and steadfastly denied the possibility of Russia interfering with the 2016 presidential election despite the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies to the contrary.
Again, Kemp shows where his priorities lie, particularly in comments he gave in 2014 to a Republican meeting in which he focused on the real problem: Democrats registering minority voters.
These two Georgia Republicans represent a larger issue that is hampering the United States, particularly in their insistence on chasing problems that aren’t there instead of addressing the problems that actually exist. As long as they keep on fighting Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Nancy Pelosi and the specter of hypothetical or nonexistent terrorist attacks, they’ll ignore the real-world crises and issues that actually matter. So far, it's still a winning strategy
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