What is it about the world we live in nowadays? Everybody wants to kill everybody else, or at the very least beat them up. We read crazy stories in the papers about people getting shot, or getting shot and killed, when they mistake one address for another, pull into the wrong driveway, ridiculously petty things like that.
You read about parents killing children out of religious delusion, you read about teenaged kids beating a teacher to death for giving them a low grade in Spanish class.
What has happened to basic civility? And of course, when it gets to politics, then things truly get unhinged. The story you’re about to see unfold, however, is not a tale of warring tribes. No. it is a tale of two Republicans who can’t get along, one the Republican chair of the Kalamazoo chapter, Kelly Sackett, and the other the Macomb County GOP secretary, Melissa Pehlis. They had words and then words turned physical and you’ll see the rest.
Here’s some background from Dead State:
Video shows the two exchanging words before Sackett slaps a cigarette and phone from the hand of Pehlis, who responded by thrusting an open hand into Sackett’s face. According to Bridge Michigan, the confrontation stems from an “escalating proxy battle” between new state GOP Chair Kristina Karamo and former ally Matthew DePerno.
“Karamo and DePerno are both prominent 2020 election deniers who shared the ballot in 2022 as the Michigan GOP nominees for secretary of state and attorney general, respectively. Both were endorsed by former President Donald Trump but lost to Democrats in November,” Bridge Michigan’s report stated. “Trump endorsed DePerno for state party chair, but Karamo prevailed at a February convention, where she appealed to grassroots delegates who now control the Michigan GOP by touting her refusal to concede the 2022 election despite a 615,349-vote loss to Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.”
In February, DePerno refused to concede what he called a “fraudulent convention” vote. He later alleged Karamo had campaign staff “in the pits counting ballots,” saying that there’s “no way to ensure the actual vote count.”
The women, who represent the two competing factions, appeared to be arguing over an alleged move by Sackett to boot Karamo loyalists from the Kalamazoo GOP.
Pretty wild stuff. But I guess it’s the new normal. Again, I’ve been saying for some time that I can’t see the current iteration of the GOP lasting. To my way of thinking, the Republican party is going to have to finally crash and burn and then some new conservative party will rise from the ashes. Or, perhaps we’ll have fragments of the GOP and maybe other splinter parties running as well, and the two-party system as we know it will go through changes.
In all events, this level of enmity is absurd. No good can come of this.
‘A house divided can not stand.’
Abraham Lincoln, Republican, 1858.
They can’t say they weren’t warned.
1858?! Not enough time for them to have absorbed the message. Give ’em another few hundred years. They just ain’t that QUICK on the uptake.
Seriously, 1858?
Too recent.
In Michigan, we prefer to refer to them as domestic terrorists and we encourage them to shoost each other to cull the herd….
I don’t know this for a fact, this is just my opinion. I suspect that some people are in a constant mindset of fear. It may actually come from all the fear-mongering that so-called conservatives are spouting these days. I suspect a good number of people believe it. I also have no idea what it will take to undo this brainwashing.
Time.
And sanity.
And lots of both
That’s good. I like it. May they continue to battle each other.