With or without Kristina Karamo, Michigan’s GOP is still destined to fail | Opinion

Kristina Karamo is fighting to retain her seat as chair of the Michigan Republican Party. But whether she wins or loses doesn’t really matter.

Karamo, a failed Secretary of State candidate who rode to party leadership on a wave of hardcore MAGA activism, has been chair for less than a year. It’s been a rocky start, with mounting debt, poor fundraising, questions about transparency and party processes, and now an intraparty civil war, as another faction of the MAGA faction that propelled her to power works to oust her.

The short version: Earlier this month, the anti-Karamo MAGA activists voted to remove her as party chair, electing Pete Hoekstra, a former Congressman from west Michigan and ambassador to the Netherlands under former President Donald Trump, to head the party. Karamo says both votes were improper. Trump has backed Hoekstra’s bid on social media, and the Republican National Committee isn’t officially taking sides, but says the vote to remove Karamo was legitimate. One lawsuit has been filed. Expect more.

But if, or when, a new chair is seated (and who knows what it will take to clear that up), don’t expect much to change about the Michigan Republican Party — even if the slightly less radical Hoekstra is seated as chair.

Why? Traditional Republicans are outnumbered. Up and down leadership, from the House to the Senate, MIGOP elected officials embrace lies about our election processes, attack our public schools, and demonize the LGBTQ+ community.

Being unmoored from reality has come back to bite Republican leadership — the party is broke — but with or without Karamo, the party is not going back to your granddad’s GOP.

It’s hard to imagine the Michigan GOP will adopt a different policy platform. And I doubt we’ll see any difference in the candidates the party backs for office.

The need to fundraise has caused those connected to the MIGOP, officially or ideologically, to make efforts to “moderate” the party — but don’t mistake that for an acknowledgement of the harm extreme right-wing rhetoric and policies can, and do, cause.

The Snyder days are here again?

Look no further than the House Republican Caucus tapping former Gov. Rick Snyder to help with the hunt for cash.

Snyder’s connections to deep-pocketed donors and his veneer of civility — this is the guy whose austerity-first, slash-and-burn policies led to the poisoning of Flint and to tons of folks wrongly accused of unemployment fraud, and who signed anti-LGBTQ+ adoption policies into law — are more palatable to the Republican donor class. But Snyder’s participation in the process hasn’t moderated the candidates the Republican party is running.

Many of the GOP state lawmakers who tried to help overturn Michigan’s 2020 elections are still in office today. House Minority Leader Matt Hall was the ringleader of an election conspiracy circus of a committee meeting in 2020 starring Rudy Giuliani and other thoroughly debunked and discredited Trump soldiers.

A majority of Michigan House Republicans voted to keep a draconian 1931 abortion ban on the books in Michigan. A handful of them even voted against bills making marital rape and child marriage illegal. And the majority of them voted to allow convicted domestic abusers to continue own firearms. The principled stand of ensuring that convicted abusers have the ability to possess firearms is still a wild take to me.

And we continue to see example after example of Michigan Republicans flirting with or even backing people and organizations tied to white nationalism and extremism without a peep from party leadership at any level.

Money for extremists, no matter who's raising it

All of these sitting Republican lawmakers and those running the show at MIGOP HQ (Although I think it’s just a PO Box at this point) can expect to receive the fruits of Snyder’s fundraising labor.

That veneer of civility is Hoekstra’s main selling point. He’s connected to the traditional Republican Party cocktail-hour-goers and fundraising apparatus Karamo has bucked. He’s been around and knows the players.

But changing who is chasing the money won’t change the policies or politics of the party. 

Hoekstra and Karamo have more in common than either of them would probably like to admit. His record is one of opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, stoking anti-Muslim sentiment, and saying QAnon believers would be welcome in his Republican Party. Sound familiar?

Snyder and Hoekstra’s efforts will directly help some of the most far-right lawmakers this state has ever seen. And let’s be blunt — today’s MIGOP would chew up and spit out both men, if either ran for office. So much for a more moderate Michigan Republican Party.

If Snyder, Hoekstra and their so-called “moderate” ilk continue to rake in cash for Republicans, it doesn’t really matter if Karamo gets the boot. Their fundraising efforts will help support, re-elect and entrench one of the most right-wing extremist crops of Republican state lawmakers that this state has ever seen.

Sam Inglot is the director of Progress Michigan. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.