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In 1838, future president Abraham Lincoln offered one of his earliest recorded speeches. He entitled it, “The Perpetuation of America’s Political Institutions.” During Lincoln’s speech, offered to the attending crowd only 62 years after our nation’s founding, the young idealist voiced his concern that the American political institutions under development could be overthrown by lawless actors. As he spoke, the young Lincoln emphasized the importance of rule of law, of civic virtue, and reason in maintaining a stable republic. He warned against the potential for ambitious individuals to undermine American government through lawlessness. To arrest that potential, Lincoln proposed the solution that Americans foster what he termed, a "political religion," offering a doctrine of “reverence for the Constitution and laws,” as a recipe for preserving liberty and justice in the fledgling republic.
Much has changed since 1838. But what has not changed is human nature. And among humans, apparently, politicians have changed the least since Lincoln’s early days.
A case in point is the present regime, practicing its own brand of lawlessness in the Georgia Republican Party. That regime, headed by its Chairman Josh McKoon, has taken lawlessness, and an attitude of irreverence for the laws under which the party is empowered, to levels previously unknown in the State of Georgia, and neither McKoon, nor those whoever attend him, nor the State of Georgia for that matter, seem to care.
I recently spoke with a Republican leader who sees what I see, but who, somewhat idealistically, as in the case of the young Lincoln in 1838, believes that the way we restore proper leadership in the Georgia Republican Party is to recruit new like-minded members and compete with the established lawless order as one might in any numbers game. Well, yes, I agree in competing in the numbers game. And more good people need to play it. But, to defeat a lawless regime such as we have in the Georgia Republican Party, conservative Georgians need more than additional conservative Georgians to attend and vote at statewide conventions. No one is going to defeat a lawless machine, such as that which occupies the Georgia Republican Party, counting on sheer numbers of votes to ensure victory. That is because, not only does that lawless machine count the votes, but that same lawless machine, run by Josh McKoon, also manipulates, even subverts the rules under which the votes are taken. In the case before us, the McKoon machine manipulated and subverted the rules under which the entire process of deciding party leadership would take place at the 2025 Georgia Republican Convention. The McKoon regime designed a redundant, coercive, lawless party election process to ensure victory, limiting the ability of party opposition to compete for positions within the party. The McKoon team was obviously not going to allow another 2023 convention to take place during which the top three of four positions were won by those who, once McKoon showed his true colors, became his opposition. So let’s look at the redundant pattern of coercive actions the McKoon regime undertook to ensure convention victory, while preserving and building their power in the party.
As I have discussed in previous efforts, the first thing Josh McKoon did to ensure a convention victory was to limit the ability of opposing candidates to communicate with the delegates scheduled to attend the convention. He did that by initiating a lawless policy of requiring each candidate for office to sign an egregious, non-disclosure agreement containing the kinds of penalties that could even bankrupt Elon Musk if fully imposed.
I say that was a “lawless policy” because neither Josh McKoon as party chairman, nor anyone else in the organization, possessed the authority to impose such a requirement. Just read the party rules. According to those rules, the chairman has only the power to do what he is specifically directed to do (1) under the rules, (2) by the convention, (3) by the State Committee, or (4) by the State Executive Committee. I have shown you those rules in the past. None of those bodies empowered the chairman, a candidate for election himself, to compose his own 9-page NDA contract, and impose a requirement of signing that agreement on each candidate running for party office, as a condition for receiving the list of delegates attending and voting at the convention. According to party rules, before imposing such a requirement, that agreement would have to be (1) written into those same party rules, or (2) specifically proposed, word-for-word, and approved by one of those bodies of authority, that is, the state convention, the State Committee, or the State Executive Committee. Regardless of party rules, McKoon, therefore lawlessly, constructed that agreement, and lawlessly imposed it upon every candidate for party office.
The NDA under consideration was written as a contract. Because it was an agreement between separate and distinct parties, it required two separate signatures, one being the candidate agreeing to do or not do certain things, the other being someone appropriately authorized to sign for the Georgia Republican Party (Inc). To demonstrate how fraudulent imposing that requirement was, apparently none of the candidates who were trusting enough to sign it, received a fully-executed, counter-signed contract for their records. The question I asked several weeks ago was to wonder who could even execute that contract on the part of the Georgia Republican Party? Because that NDA was a lawless, rule-breaking, unauthoritative instrument in the first place, there would be no one, including Chairman McKoon, authorized to execute it for the party. Did Chairman McKoon sign the NDA to receive the delegate list? If he did, who signed for the party, Chairman McKoon again? One cannot contract with one’s self, friends. Contracting with one’s self is meaningless and void. If McKoon broke the requirements of the NDA, was he supposed to turn himself over to himself, and authorize the party to sue him? Do you see how lawless that policy was? A policy such as I describe turns back on itself.
But, McKoon does not care. McKoon’s purpose was not to protect any delegate’s personal information. McKoon’s purpose was to intimidate opposing candidates out of the ability to effectively compete for party offices. And he succeeded. For my Republican friends who believe sheer numbers can win in the end, do you see how this supposed “numbers game” is played? It is not a numbers game in the first place. What we are examining here is a lawless, unruly, manipulated, program of subversion and intimidation, designed as merely the first step toward full control of convention election outcomes. This is how lawless, third-world dictatorships are run. Using those same methods is how large populations can be controlled by a very few the masses perceive to possess power. If it were truly a numbers game, third-world dictatorships could never exist.Subscribe
The next step in the program of redundant measures designed to control the Georgia Republican Convention election outcomes was for Chairman McKoon to effectively suspend the rules governing the convention. But, McKoon had to suspend those rules without anyone realizing it moment by moment. He had to do it in a way that he could get away with and which, importantly, would not require a vote.
If you were in Dalton that day, you will recall Chairman McKoon addressing the convention, magnanimously declaring that he would not preside over party elections in which he, himself, would be a contestant. Think back, did McKoon therefore assign the convention chairmanship over to a qualified parliamentarian to hold the gavel, someone who knows the party rules, knows Robert’s Rules and who is trained and skilled to conduct such proceedings? No. Instead, Chairman McKoon effectively suspended all rules, handing the gavel to his friend, former state senator Mike Crane. I say McKoon suspended the rules because the person to whom he handed the chairmanship soon demonstrated that he neither knew, nor likely cared about any party rules, nor Robert’s Rules prescribed under those same party rules, an individual who would therefore be incapable of running the convention by its rules even if he wanted to. Crane acted as though he had been given marching orders to do whatever he needed to do to stifle McKoon’s opposition, to make as many vote determinations as he could get away with from the podium, even admitting he could not see the convention floor due to the bright lights. Crane rushed through every necessary vote as swiftly as he could, failing to recognize opposing voices at the microphones, failing to recognize or do anything about McKoon supporters blocking those microphones, and finished the elections as quickly as possible.
And while Mr. Crane was at it, he broke the Convention Rules published only minutes before the meeting came to order. Crane seemingly created a lull in the process, giving him the opportunity to usher out two well-known McKoon supporters to tell the crowd how wonderful Josh McKoon is, each spending five minutes or more to complete their remarks, violating Convention Rule 9, allowing five minutes total for each candidate for chairman to speak.
To ensure that his unqualified convention chairman would not get into trouble with the opposition making motions from the floor to stop the brewing convention steal, McKoon teams controlled access to the convention microphones. With more than an hour remaining prior to the scheduled convention start, sitting directly in front of me at the rear of the convention hall, delegate Debbie Dooley received a text, after which she expressed audibly, “THEY need me at the microphones.” She gathered her belongings and headed up toward microphone #1, where she spent the convention.
The plan’s execution had begun. Below you will hear Ms. Dooley openly admitting she took part in the execution of a plan administered by Brant Frost to block the convention microphones from use by McKoon’s opposition, thus, again, effectively suspending convention rules which require unfettered access to all delegates wishing to address the convention chair :
Below is a post by Brant Frost confirming the plan openly admitted by Debbie Dooley:
Now, could any of this subversion of the convention’s deliberative processes be done as a surprise, or at least without the tacit consent of Chairman Josh McKoon? No, McKoon was there then entire time. McKoon knows the rules and knew that were not being followed. McKoon could have stopped the blocking of microphones at any juncture. He watched or heard the entire set of events as they unfolded, and did nothing.
Ms. Dooley boasted that blocking the microphones was a strategic plan by Brant Frost. Frost, himself, confirmed Dooley’s prideful statements, boasting and attributing that same master plan to subvert the convention to a certain ensemble he referenced as, “we.” So, who is “we?” Because Josh McKoon was fully aware of what was happening, whether it was his plan at the outset or not, and we have very good reason to suspect it was, when he could have stopped it, but did not, the party chairman effectively became a member, either actively or tacitly, of “we.”
Interestingly, the only matters about which Dooley or Frost are apparently being honest is their own dishonesty. Subverting fairness in the deliberative process associated with political decisions, is not an act of being better at politics, as Frost professes. It is cheating. I suggest that what we are seeing here explains how we see so many cheating slime balls in politics. Brant Frost says all this is “literally politics,” which in his vernacular appears to mean that he views a political convention as merely a game, seemingly professing that there is nothing more important to a Republican convention than doing whatever one needs to do, breaking whatever rules one needs to break, in order to win the game.
When asked whether she blocked microphones from individuals larger or more physically formidable than herself, Ms. Dooley’s laughing and boastful response was that she “held her own,” in the process admitting being part of a conspiracy to subvert the rules of the convention. That these people are laughing and gloating about subverting the convention’s deliberative processes should inform every normal, honest, conservative Georgian about politics. Politics is a dirty game and many of those who play it are themselves dirty and culpable for their actions, or at least should be culpable.
And that is why I wrote above that while all this was going on, Robert’s Rules were effectively suspended. Robert’s Rules do not allow any of the activities I describe. The act of knowingly assigning an individual who does not know Robert’s Rules to be a convention chair governed by Robert’s Rules, as McKoon did, and stand aside as his his assigned chairman repeatedly botched, broke or ignored convention rules, was a lawless act by the party chairman. Knowing Crane was not versed or skilled at administering Robert’s Rules, the party chair also knew Crane would not be able to successfully administer the requirements of the convention chair, even if he tried, which apparently was not a priority in any event, demonstrating that the lawlessness associated with those decisions was planned in advance, further evidence of an orchestrated plan of redundant measures designed to control the outcome of the 2025 Georgia Republican Convention, and preserve Chairman McKoon’s position of power heading up the state party for another two years.
Parliamentary citations regarding the numerous material rules of order broken or ignored during the recent Georgia Republican Convention, contributing to likely distorted outcomes, can be found in my previous Substack entitled, FORMAL CHALLENGE To the Procedures and Ethical Violations at the 2025 Georgia Republican State Convention.
Now, in my discussion of matters pertaining to certain redundant measures employed by Chairman McKoon and others apparently conspiring to control the outcome of the convention, I have used the term, “lawless” several times. I have chosen that term with good reason. That is because I view the purposeful ignoring of material Republican Party Rules, the various acts of which were designed to promote and ensure a particular set of convention outcomes, as “lawlessness.” That term is not too strong when describing the acts of McKoon and others because an examination of Georgia law leads to the conclusion that the law requires the Georgia Republican Party to obey its own rules. Thus, when the party purposely ignores its own rules, or subverts its own rules, that behavior is what I term, “lawlessness.” Where does Georgia law say that? It says it in OCGA 21-2-111. Let’s examine its provisions. Here is OCGA 21-2-111:
According to 21-2-111(a), the power of Georgia law authorizes and flows through a political party committee it describes as a, “state executive committee.” Georgia law endows that committee with, “statewide jurisdiction and control over party affairs.” In the Rules of the Georgia Republican Party, Inc., the committee endowed with that jurisdiction is one given the name and referenced as the, “State Committee.”
According to 21-2-111(b), that committee (State Committee) is authorized by law to “formulate, adopt and promulgate RULES and REGULATIONS, CONSISTENT WITH THE LAW, governing the conduct of conventions and other party affairs.” The law cannot contemplate authorizing RULES that will not, or should not be followed. After all, RULES that are not followed are not RULES. Therefore, a political party must follow its own RULES, and failing to do to would be INCONSISTENT WITH THE LAW authorizing the RULES to begin with.
Certain power endowed by the law flows through the “State Committee” and serves to authorize Republican Party Rules that GOVERN THE CONDUCT OF CONVENTIONS. As I just reasoned, the law does not contemplate, nor authorize party rules that will not be followed by the party. Furthermore, following different rules that are not party rules, and which indeed conflict with party rules, defines a certain “subversion” of party rules, SUBstituting a VERSION of party rules NOT authorized by law to overrule the version that IS authorized by law. That is what “subversion” means. Subversion is accomplished by breaking the law originally authorizing the party rules, thereby becoming an instance of “lawlessness,” operating by rules not authorized by law. When that occurs, party rules simply become empty words on a page, subverted by ad hoc rules imposed as time proceeds by a tyrannical oppressor or conspiracy of oppressors. Those oppressors subvert rules, leading to the conclusion that any party chairman who causes, or knowingly allows that to occur, can only do so “lawlessly.”
Any organization required to abide by its own rules, but opts not to, is in Robert’s Rules terms, “out of order.” That being the case, the moment Chairman McKoon handed the gavel off to his friend, knowing his friend to be untrained and incapable of properly administering the Georgia Republican Party Convention, was the moment the convention began to spiral “out of order.”
Now, by any measure, did the Georgia Republican Party or the Georgia Republican Party, Inc., remain true to operating the Dalton convention under Robert’s Rules? Most I know would answer, no. As you have seen, once the nominations of candidates began, and once former state senator Mike Crane took chairmanship of proceedings, there was very little noticeable adherence to any rules adopted and promulgated under OCGA 21-2-111 by the State Committee, those being the rules of the party empowered under Georgia law. Thus, from that moment forth, all the way through the election of party officers, because the convention was not conducted according to party rules, the Georgia Republican Party Convention could not have been operated under the law empowering the convention.Subscribe
An interesting turn of events, having to do with resolutions occurred after the elections were over. One resolution, in particular, Chairman McKoon would express to reporters that he would not follow through to enforce.
That said, according to the Rules of the Georgia Republican Party, Inc., promulgated by the party as applicable to the Dalton Convention, the following passage describes the “duties” of the party chairman:
Under those rules, it is the “duty” of the State Chairman to do as he is required by the State Convention. To that point, after the election of officers was completed, the convention, represented by an adequate quorum, passed the following resolution:
That resolution is a duly-enacted instruction, expressed by the will of the Georgia Republican Party, requiring its Chairman to refuse to qualify present Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, should Raffensperger apply to receive ballot access to run in a Republican primary for any office in the State of Georgia, unless or until a future convention removes that restriction. And as you just read, under party rules, adopted pursuant to Georgia law, the State Chairman, “shall perform duties required by…the State Convention.”
Yet, according to Chairman McKoon, should he do so, he would be in violation of Georgia law, and thus he says he will not move to block a future Raffensperger Republican candidacy.
The Georgia law to which McKoon referred would be O.C.G.A. § 21-2-153(b)(4), which states:
Recently, however, the US 11th Circuit opined recognizing the authority of political parties to exclude candidates, even after signing an oath affirming their commitment to party principles. According to the 11th Circuit, “A political party’s right to free association encompasses the right to exclude candidate(s) in the party primary in order to protect itself from those with adverse political principles.” The following excerpt was published by the Catoosa County Republican Party earlier this month:
Thus, according to US 11 Circuit, it appears Chairman McKoon has no lawful standing to refuse to enforce the above directions duly-enacted by a convention resolution he is directed by Georgia Republican Party Rules to perform. Some have said the above resolution, duly-passed by the State Convention, is non-binding. But, under the rules of the Georgia Republican Party, Inc., there is no reference to convention resolutions being “non-binding” on the party or the party chairman.
Instead, with respect to convention resolutions the Rules of the Georgia Republican Party, Inc. say only the following:
And according to the State Call,
Under the Rules of the Georgia Republican Party, Inc., the State Convention holds all jurisdiction over the party while it is in session. Outside of the party officer election process, the State Convention expresses its will via duly-passing resolutions. Those resolutions carry the supreme authority of the party. As long as a resolution is lawful, no instrument of the party may therefore overrule it. No chairman may overrule it. Under party rules, only the convention has authority to overrule its own resolutions.
Thus, in the case of the above duly-enacted resolution, only the State Convention has sufficient authority to alter the chairman’s instruction prohibiting him from qualifying Brad Raffensperger to run as a Republican anywhere in the State of Georgia. Either Chairman McKoon abides by that instruction, or he could be deemed in breach of the contract implied by his candidacy for that office, that contract requiring him to abide by the rules of the party should he win.
And Chairman McKoon would have no defense were he charged with breach by a suitable plaintiff or set of plaintiffs, because the Chairman already violated his own expressed principle, permanently banning former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan from ever running as a Republican again in Georgia, McKoon publishing the following on X, as an open letter written to Duncan:
I would not call Chairman Josh McKoon a hypocrite, only because political hypocrites laugh when you say that. You see, political hypocrites do not care whether you call them hypocrites. They do not think that way. Those people do not see the world through your eyes. As Brant Frost wrote at the outset, hypocritical politicians recognize their own hypocrisy as “literally politics.” Are you getting this? It’s a game for them. So, you are never going to gain a politician’s ear, or affect his sensibilities by calling him a hypocrite.
Furthermore, you are not going to shame a politician. That is because, to a politician, shame is only when one loses. If normal, good people are ever going to understand politics, they must first recognize the paradigm under which politicians operate. Perhaps think of those politicians as “sincerely insincere.” They are deliberately and knowingly hypocritical. They are “trustfully untrustworthy.” Politicians are in it for one thing, themselves. They will fight you openly when they are provably wrong. They will spin the truth into a tangled web you will never unravel. They will never give in, they will never give up, UNLESS YOU MAKE THEM!
And that it where we must go next, to discuss how Georgia Republicans make their party responsible to the law, and to party rules enacted pursuant to the law. There is really only one way to do that, and there is no guarantee of success, and that would be to take them to court. In doing so, there is only a guaranty that those who run the party, such as it is, would endeavor to delay court proceedings at every step along the way, anticipating that if they delay long enough, they would finally be replaced by others, a fresh set of politicians likely just as bad or worse, who are just as sincerely insincere, just as deliberately hypocritical, and just as trustfully untrustworthy.
You may detect me arguing against my own thesis here. I’m not, but I am being realistic. Victory would take time and effort. In his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy spoke of laudable, but difficult purposes he proposed for the American people to support. Of those purposes, JFK spoke the following:
“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”
Recently, on behalf of statewide Republicans, a small group of patriots, motivated only by shared ideals, wrote and filed a challenge of the results of the Georgia Republican Party Convention with the party. They did likewise, filing a complaint of those proceedings with the Republican National Committee. Understanding they would likely receive no responses, they did it because it was incumbent on those who witnessed those events to document what they saw and heard, file the documentation officially, and make that information known to as many party members as possible. They did that not because they wanted to, nor had extra time to fill. They did it because it was the right thing to do.
And I also believe it is the right thing to challenge those I regard as having stolen the 2025 Georgia Republican Convention results, in court. Time after time, President Trump has demonstrated that the established, tyrannical order will oppress those who do not fight back until the system’s victims succumb under the rule of their masters. It is time to begin to call a class of Georgia Republicans, who are devoted to holding their politicians accountable, to sign up for such a purpose, not only in spirit, but also by contributing to that cause.
The Georgia Republican Party is as divided as most have ever known it. The problem will not heal itself. 2026 elections are on the horizon. As fractured and fragmented as that party is at this juncture, there is very little chance of Republican victory. Something must be done to impart justice. Only justice can heal the divide.
At the election, even Chairman Josh McKoon spoke of the 2020 stolen election, and then apparently undertook stealing his own. Are Georgia Republicans going to allow that to go unchallenged? We will have to wait and see what the future holds.
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