The Problem With Kemp I

The Problem With Kemp I

A Sheep in Wolves Clothing

There are many ways you can describe Brian Kemp. You could call him slow, reactive, milquetoast, conservative, and many, many more titles, but the one that is never fitting is leader. Through and through, Brian Kemp is a man that simply follows. He is desperate to reach the big league of politics that he’s dreamed of playing in, and so he tries to mimic the people he sees in the positions he wants. There isn’t one aspect of him that is original or authentic, everything is simply a show so he can hold on to the power he wants, and the worst part is it’s so damn obvious. The first signs of his inability to think for himself was early in the 2018 gubernatorial race during the crowded Republican primary. It was commonly accepted at the time that the real race in heavily conservative Georgia was the Republican primary, because a win there combined with a guaranteed general election victory meant you were the next governor. With that knowledge in hand, Kepm and 5 other high profile candidates jumped into the race, from Lt. Governor Casey Cagel to Hunter Hill and Michael Williams, both former state senators. Lt. Gov Cagel quickly became the front runner with 7 million dollars in the bank and oodles of endorsements from the incumbent Governor, Nathan Deal as well as lots of former representatives and senators, and Kemp quickly became an afterthought. He averaged around 15% in most polls, pulling dangerously close to the third place finish that would eliminate him from the runoff and therefore his career, and that’s when he started to panic. In an anxious knee jerk reaction, he quickly decided to outflank Cagle from the right which he saw as his only way forward, throwing away the mostly moderate positions he had held earlier in an attempt to just win. He started calling himself the “politically incorrect conservative”, when he had been nothing but the mild mannered conservative before, and began airing ads that make Alex Jones look down right wholesome in comparison. There was the one where the pro 2nd Amendment candidate who should know basic gun safety pointed a shotgun at a teenager to show his “southern values”, and another where he drove around in a  big truck so he could, “round up the criminal illegals”, because that’s what totally normal people do. The one that perfectly crystallizes his problem however is when he used a CGI explosion to illustrate how he was, “so conservative, [he] blows up government spending”, because it shows how much he had to overcompensate. He panicked when he was losing and decided to go to the right to fix it, but swung so hard he sounded like a moron. Real conservatives don’t need to tell you how conservative they are. People who are anti-immigration don’t need to buy a truck to show how anti-immigration they are. People who truly believe in an issue spend years fighting and pushing for it, to the point where you know they care about it from their actions alone. Since Kemp had no record to fall back on, he decided he had to instead tell us how batshit crazy he is, but instead of convincing anyone he is the Republican reincarnation of George Wallace it just shows how fake he is. In response to all these ads, Cagle, who again is the one everyone endorsed,  said the Republican primary was all about which person, “could be the craziest”, and he really isn’t wrong. Kemp’s lunge to the right, based in pandering and panic, led him to give up what had been his core beliefs in order to win an election that will be forgotten about in 20 years. 

He chose shock value in pointing guns at kids and putting brown people in trucks over actual policy and governing. He was willing to fake even his base personality, to destroy his true self in the pursuit of power , and that in itself is the inherent problem with Kemp. If you do not have the strength to even be yourself, then how do you have the strength to lead us? The answer is he doesn’t, and it’s been proven time and time again, from his cheating during the election to his life threatening response to Corona, but those are stories for another day. If you ever wonder though why he acts this way, I hope this helped answer that question.


- James Earl Miller






- Sources

• https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/georgia-votes-2018-war-breaks-out-between-cagle-and-decatur-over-sanctuary-cities/85-552584199
• https://www.foxnews.com/politics/georgia-candidate-kemp-triggers-uproar-with-shotgun-ad
• https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/05/10/brian-kemp-illegals-ad/600212002/
• https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/07/gop-candidate-cagle-admits-primary-about-whos-craziest.html