Brian Kemp's image as moderate Trump alternative brutally savaged by hometown newspaper
With former President Donald Trump pulling into a clear lead as the Republican nominee, calls from within the party are growing to draft a candidate who could appeal to moderates in a general election.
Among the biggest names floated that some believe can reach the middle without alienating the base is Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who famously stood up to Trump in 2020 when the former president tried to overturn the results of the state’s election he lost to Joe Biden.
The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin just last week promoted Kemp’s viability in a column published under the headline “The most capable Trump primary opponent isn’t in the race.”
But Georgia's major newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution came out with a brutal attack on its state's governor Wednesday, claiming his appeal to Republicans with centrist sensibilities doesn’t square with the governor’s actual record.
Patricia Murphy wrote in a column for the newspaper that the notion o Kemp being the GOP’s “moderate savior” is moot because he’s not a candidate, and that even if he was, “an underlying piece of the draft-Kemp calculus seems to be an assumption, or maybe even a hope, among news analysts outside of Georgia, that Kemp’s moderate tone and demeanor in public mean he is also moderate in his politics.”
“But they should know that the Georgia governor is nobody’s moderate. He’s not even close.”
Murphy asserts that Kemp’s legislative record shows that the Georgia governor “was Ron DeSantis before Ron DeSantis was Ron DeSantis,” noting that Kemp was first to enact several of the far-right policies the Florida governor touts, writing that “with the exception of declaring war on Mickey Mouse, Kemp did it first, and in some cases, years earlier.”
The six-week abortion ban that DeSantis signed earlier this year closely mirrors a bill Kemp signed more than four years ago.
Kemp eliminated restrictions on carrying firearms without a permit years before DeSantis and was stigmatizing transgender athletes long before the Florida governor, Murphy notes.
Georgia voters appear to have rewarded Kemp for resisting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 elections with a resounding 2022 reelection victory, but Murphy writes that Kemp is unlikely to save the country from a second Trump presidency.
Murphy writes that “So national pundits and moderates , it’s highly unlikely that Brian Kemp will even attempt to rescue you from a Trump nomination. But if he does, know what you’ll be getting: A politically astute, sometimes irrationally brave candidate who is in no way a moderate Republican.”
“If that’s what you’re looking for, he may be your man. If you could only get him out to Iowa.”