In leaked audio obtained by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp can be heard shit-talking MAGA Congressmen Mike Collins and Buddy Carter as non-viable candidates to take on incumbent Dem Senator Jon Ossoff in next year’s crucial midterm.

“Another congressman from a heavily Republican district with a congressional voting record isn’t going to work… I know and respect both Congressmen Carter and Collins. This is not an attack on them. It’s just the way that I feel. Ossoff will have hundreds of millions of dollars to define anyone’s voting record in the worst possible light,” said Kemp, an astute observer of politics who nevertheless proooooobably wishes this audio hadn’t leaked given the reported private tensions between him and the Orange God Emperor over Kemp’s selling his endorsee Derek Dooley over the two cultists Carver and Collins. “People are pissed. Trumpworld is pissed,” a source told NOTUS of the drama.

The former University of Tennessee NCAA football coach Dooley is “a hard worker who can connect with people and will bring common sense to Washington,” the governor said on the call with GOP donors. “While he may not have a political background, he has been tested more than most.”

Yeah that part’s subjective bullshit but whatever, the first point about Carter and Collins still stands and says even more than Kemp had intended about the state of Republican politics these days. He himself was supposed to be running in this race instead of a former coach he recruited from goddamned Tennessee. Kemp, who terms out next year and had been free to launch a bid, was the only one polling ahead of Ossoff and yet he ducked it – almost certainly the main reason for that is the very same as why he thinks Collins or Carter would have a hard time and it’s better to just put a tabula rasa in the race. Way too many MAGA voters are going to be checked out, wayyy too many swing voters are going to be fucking pissed, and a record is a liability, not an asset.