Politico: “Nowhere has the post-Trump era been more painful for the Republican Party than Georgia, where Trump loyalists’ war on Republican elected officials is still raging, at great cost. Following the presidential election, lost by Republicans in Georgia for the first time since 1992, the party crumpled in the January Senate runoffs. In the Atlanta suburbs, once a citadel of conservatism, Republicans were blown out. Yet if that was cause for any introspection, it was not readily apparent as Republicans gathered at county conventions in recent days to chart their course for the midterm elections and the next presidential race in 2024.”

“In Cobb County, the archetype of the GOP’s suburban erosion, Republican activists over the weekend were still re-litigating former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud while drafting resolutions to rebuke the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and other Republican officials for their unwillingness to overturn Trump’s loss. The Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has been all but excommunicated. The once dominant Georgia GOP might be in meltdown in the suburbs, but the rank-and-file remains obsessed with Trump and the perceived wrongs of the last election. As party activists vented at their county convention here, the chair of the Cobb County Young Republicans, DeAnna Harris, stewed in the parking lot of her local party office. ‘Huge mistake,’ she said of the hostilities directed at Kemp and the reliving of 2020. ‘We’ve got to get out of this mindset. It’s almost like insanity.’ To traditionalist Republicans in Georgia, the infighting between fervent Trump supporters and the establishment wing of the party has become increasingly alarming as the midterm elections come into focus. The GOP is desperate to regain its footing in the suburbs following Trump’s collapse there. But it was moderate Republicans and independent voters, not Trump loyalists, who abandoned Trump in November, and the party’s fixation on the former president may only alienate them further, with potentially disastrous consequences for 2022 and beyond.”