Brian Kemp exposes himself

Not like that.

(Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp)

For much of the past three years, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has been held up by Democrats (and many members of the media) as what the Republican party could be.

Kemp was a conservative, sure, but one who a) acknowledged the 2020 election was free and fair and b) was not afraid to criticize Donald Trump.

Kemp’s clap back at Trump last month even went viral.

This idea of Kemp as the “good” Republican has grown so strong that some within the GOP — mostly major donor types — have talked about the possibility of Kemp as a late entrant into the 2024 presidential race as an alternative to the frontrunning billionaire businessman.

Over the weekend, the Kemp train went off the tracks. At least for me.

In an interview with the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Kemp said that he would back Trump over President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential race.

“Despite all of that, despite all of his other trials and tribulations, he would still be a lot better than Biden,” Kemp told the AJC. “And the people serving in the administration would be a lot better than Joe Biden.”

He added that the election “has everything to do with winning and reversing the ridiculous, obscene positions of Joe Biden and this administration that literally, in a lot of ways, are destroying our country.”

Huh.

Look. I get it. For all his apostasy on Trump and election fraud, Kemp is still a Republican. And an ambitious one at that. He undoubtedly has his eye on running for president in 2028 (or at some point in the future) and knows that saying he will vote for the Democratic nominee in 2024 is poison for his ambitions.

At the same time, consider what Trump has done to Kemp:

• Repeatedly vilified him for following the rules of the Georgia election

• Pressured him to change votes

• Recruited and actively backed a primary challenger to him in 2022

• Castigated him for not being tough enough on the Fulton County investigation into Trump’s role in the 2020 election

If there’s any Republican in the country who could be forgiven — on a purely personal basis — for abandoning a Trump presidential bid, Kemp would be that guy!

But, for me, Kemp’s willingness to line up behind Trump speaks to a broader cancer growing within the Republican party.

Consider the likely choice facing voters next year:

• An aged — and slowing — president who people don’t believe has done enough (or the right things) on the economy and foreign policy (among other things)

• A man who, as president, not only refused to concede defeat in 2020 but also worked the official levers of the government to try to deliver himself a win. And, when that didn’t work, helped to incite a violent rebellion against the very government of which he was a part.

These are not the same thing. You can disagree with Joe Biden — hell, you can HATE him — without believing that, if he loses in 2024, he would refuse to accept the results and actively work to overturn them.

With Trump, you don’t even need to imagine what he would do in 2024. We already know! He did it in 2020!

For me, comments like Kemp’s suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of this moment in American politics. That misunderstanding is based on the belief that the choice in the next election is between a Democrat and a Republican. And, since Kemp is a Republican, he says he will vote for whatever Republican his party chooses.

But, that’s not really the choice on offer here. We can debate whether Trump is even a Republican in any traditional sense of the word (that’s for another post) but what we KNOW about him is that he is someone who is willing to subvert democracy for his own selfish purposes.

Which makes the choice in 2024 between a candidate with no known anti-democratic sentiments versus one who not only has those tendencies but has acted on them on the biggest stage possible.

THOSE are the stakes. Brian Kemp doesn’t seem to get that.