Henry County, Georgia is one of those rapidly changing, rapidly growing counties causing Georgia to slowly turn back toward the Democrats. George W. Bush won the county in 2004 with almost 60 percent of the vote. John McCain won the county, as did Mitt Romney, but each time falling closer and closer to fifty percent. In 2014, Democrat Michelle Nunn won Henry County in the U.S. Senate election.
The county has seen a decrease in white voters and an increase in minority voters. As mostly black voters have moved into Henry County to escape the problems of neighboring Clayton County, white voters have moved out. This shift of voters and voting patterns is playing out across the nation from Wisconsin to Texas. Republican led states, doing better economically than most Democrat led states, are experiencing population surges of Democrats fleeing the states they previously screwed up.
Into this mix add George Soros. The billionaire investor and currency trader backs liberal and socialist causes around the world. Soros, convicted of insider trading, has not let that stop his political crusades. Though liberals tend to shun white collar criminals as greedy capitalists, Soros has been embraced because he supports the right causes.
In Henry County, Georgia, George Soros has found such a cause. The local race for District Attorney has attracted Soros's money. Republican Matt McCord just surrendered his race to Democrat Darius Patillo. Soros set up a political action group in Georgia called "Georgia Safety and Justice." The group has thus far spent $91,000.00 for Patillo, much of it attacking McCord.
Citing the harm to his family and nastiness imported into the race, McCord dropped out. Patillo will be the next District Attorney. Patillo is softer on crime than McCord and favors liberal criminal justice reforms. In other counties in Georgia, Soros is helping liberal candidates become local District Attorneys, building farm teams for future office and a lobby group to weaken criminal laws.
It is not just local District Attorney races that Soros hopes to affect. His money has helped state attorneys general, secretaries of state, and state legislative candidates around the nation. He is using his money to shape state level policies at a time the states are increasingly aggressive against Barack Obama's national agenda.
We can get a taste of the outcome of this from the battles over gay marriage. Citizens of various states backed initiatives to affirm marriage as between one man and one woman. When sued, liberal state attorneys general refused to defend the marriage laws despite it being their duty to do so. These surrenders helped pave the way for imposition of gay marriage by the United States Supreme Court.
Republicans are not playing the long game like Soros. Republicans have repeatedly confused strategy with tactics and focused on the short term at the expense of the long term. Concurrently, Republican affiliated groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council have come under attack by Soros funded groups. In other words, Soros is not only funding the next generation of liberal candidates, but is also spending money to poison the well of conservative thought. ALEC, which helps conservatives advance state legislative initiatives, is routinely attacked as a sinister, corrupt group, when it is nothing of the sort.
Republican donors should learn from George Soros. Soros sees his return on investment in terms of advancing his cause. Republican donors still tend to view rates of return financially. Soros is unconcerned with credit while Republican donors want buildings named after themselves. Soros has shunned the professional political class while Republican donors continue to subsidize the very same political consultants who lost the McCain race, the Romney race, and all the races against Trump in the Republican primary.
George Soros is trying to fundamentally transform the United States. Republican donors and their institutions not only are not catching up, they are not even headed in the right direction.
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