'MAGA versus ultra-MAGA': Report claims in-fighting at Michigan GOP has left 'no one in control'

Michigan Republicans are doubling down on the MAGA extremism that cost them last year's midterm elections in the state, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.

At least four county GOP groups are at war within themselves, with lawsuits firing back and forth among members, competing slates claiming leadership and even physical altercations at party meetings. The new Michigan Republican chairwoman Kristina Karamo has struggled with fundraising and abandoned the organization's longtime headquarters, reported the Post.

“There’s no one in control anymore,” said GOP consultant Jason Cabel Roe.

Donald Trump dominates the Michigan GOP, as he does in other battleground states like Arizona and Georgia, but the state party's most active Republicans have been unable to agree on how to carry out the former president's "America First" agenda and continue to argue about his 2020 election loss.

“They basically see anyone who has been there as part of the problem and a RINO,” Roe said. “I think there’s been a systemic effort to eradicate people that have been involved for many years, and they’re being replaced by MAGA-aligned folks that have not been involved and engaged and don’t necessarily understand how the process works.”

The state party approved rules over the weekend that would award most of their delegates to the 2024 Republican National Convention based on party-run caucuses instead of the Michigan primary, which would clear a path to Trump winning the nomination regardless of what the state's GOP voters say, and MAGA champion Matthew DePerno has found himself on the outs because he opposes the change.

“Some people in the party have always said that I was too far to the right in terms of my messaging, and yet here I have somehow become the RINO,” said DePerno, who was formally censured at last weekend's regional GOP meeting.

DePerno, an election-denying candidate for attorney general who earned Trump's endorsement before losing in November, has challenged Karamo's leadership and accused her of carrying out a religious purge of the state party.

“The questions that I got almost every night at these events during the chair race were, you know, ‘Man, why don’t you publicly evangelize?’” said DePerno, who is Catholic. “‘You can evangelize, right? Why don’t you say amen? Why don’t you raise your hands to the sky when people are talking?’”

Karamo, who lost her bid for secretary of state before beating DePerno and other pro-Trump candidates to lead the state party, denied DePerno's claims about a religious purge and insisted that donors would return after the party cleaned up government corruption.

“You put the people first and the dollars will come,” she said. “There are lots of very wealthy people who quit giving to political candidates and parties because of the corruption.”

But longtime party members see the turmoil as another consequence of Trump's leadership over the Republican Party nationwide, and predicted that cycle would continue.

“This is more MAGA-on-MAGA violence, or more MAGA versus ultra-MAGA,” said Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party and current adviser to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project.