In a recent article entitled “You Have Only Yourself to Blame” from The Marietta Daily Journal about the previous Cobb GOP breakfast, State Senator Ed Setzler (R-Acworth) was asked by several participants why Governor Brian Kemp is doing so little to help his fellow Republicans in our county and in the state in general. “He says he’s a Christian,” said one questioner. “When is he going to act like a Christian?”

Questioners reportedly asked in particular about the Executive branch’s failure to help with the “home rule” controversy pertaining to the Cobb Commission maps, and about the Governor’s refusal to call a special session to hold Democrat D.A. Fani Willis accountable for her harassment of the alternate electors (and other charges of misconduct).

Senator Setzler replied that he believes Kemp is retaliating against the Cobb GOP for issuing a public reprimand against the Governor in September 2021 after he certified the 2020 Presidential Election without fully investigating it for evidence of election fraud.

“When a party organization, you may think you’re justified, when a party organization formally and in writing censures a sitting governor from their own party in a rebuke, I can guarantee you what that “When a party organization, you may think you’re justified, when a party organization formally and in writing censures a sitting governor from their own party in a rebuke,” Setzler is reported to have said, “I can guarantee you what that means. Your party organization’s voice vanishes. … That doesn’t mean whether you are right or wrong on the issue. Set that aside. But when parties rebuke in writing and resolution their own sitting governor — you have every right to do that, but when you feel like your voice isn’t there anymore, you have only yourself to blame.”

Here is another case in politics of the tail wagging the dog. In our constitutional system, we are told that it is “We the people” who are in charge of the civil government, and that the Constitution is “the Supreme Law of the Land” but we still we have elected officials who seem to think they are over the people and the laws, and will make personal vendettas a higher priority ahead of doing the right thing to help the state, or even their own party. It’s also incredibly ungrateful since these folks have campaigned for Kemp, donated to him, and voted for him. It’s a slap in the face.

At best, it’s like a team’s football quarterback has decided to throw easy interceptions to the opposing team instead of his own team because he’s mad at the defensive lineman for not blocking a tackle when the quarterback previously lobbed the ball to other team.

“This confirms what we all know,” said Cobb RA President Chris Deeb. “Kemp is small, petty, and vicious.”

While we at the Cobb Republican Assembly at the time did take exception to some of the procedure used in how the public reprimand of Governor Kemp was adopted in Cobb, we have expressed from the beginning and still to this day affirm that we believe the Cobb GOP ultimately did the right thing in calling out the Governor. When Republican officials will not receive private entreaties and/or when their wrong actions are public in nature and harmful to the community at large, it is appropriate for those actions to be publicly rebuked. Otherwise, the rest of the society might assume that all Republicans approve of such bad actions.

Christians have a Bible verse that reminds them “judgment begins in the House of God” (I Peter 4:17). It means that before Christians can preach against sins they observe in the rest of the world, they first have to address their own sins in the Church. By the same token, before Republicans can rebuke Democrats with credibility, they have to first hold their own accountable to what they preach. 

Accountability is what we need more of in the Republican Party throughout Georgia. Not a lap-dog mentality to those in positions of high office.

If we genuinely respect God more than politicians, we have to confront them when they violate God’s transcendent moral principles (upon which our Republican Party platform principles are based) found in “the laws of nature and the laws of nature’s God” (i.e. the Bible)—just as our founders did. God will certainly hold us accountable if we do not hold our political officials accountable.