GOP's 'short term sugar high in Donald Trump' won't last, Georgia's Republican lt. gov. predicts

MANCHESTER, N. H. - Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan says he’s getting "very little push back" from fellow Republicans over his burgeoning effort to reboot what he hopes will be a post-Donald Trump GOP.

Duncan spotlights that other Republicans have quietly come up to him and thanked him for "doing the right thing" and tell him "this means a lot for this country, this means a lot for this party."

Georgia’s lieutenant governor made his comments in a national exclusive interview with Fox News and during an address to an audience at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics on Tuesday, where Duncan kicked off the inaugural event to sell "GOP 2.0," the idea behind his new book and his evolving push to fix a Republican Party that he says has been damaged by former President Trump.

"It's a better pathway forward for our conservative party," Duncan emphasized. "If done right, GOP 2.0 is going to be a safe place to call home for commonsense conservatives. It's going to allow us to win on the policy front, but it's also going to allow us to win on the ballot boxes."

Duncan stressed that "our job now as Republicans is to harness all of the good that we've done over the years, all of those great policy positions that make sense for a majority of Americans, and then self-evaluate the things that we need to improve. What can we do better."

"With just a few course adjustments…I believe the GOP can get back on track," Duncan predicted.

The former college baseball star and minor league pitcher turned heath care executive - who served as a Georgia state lawmaker before his 2018 election as lieutenant governor - grabbed national attention in the weeks after the 2020 election for speaking out against then-President Trump’s unfounded claims of "massive voter fraud."

"I was doing all the due diligence that I could to figure out if there was any systemic fraud in that election, and the answer every day was no. We never could find any fraud. We could never find any secret tidbit that could help us find out if the election was rigged, because it wasn't," Duncan said.

Georgia was one of six states where now-President Biden narrowly edged Trump, helping him win the White House. Duncan, along with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, resisted Trump’s requests to overturn the election results in the Peach State.

"I was very aggressive early and often in speaking against the fraud," Duncan said.

But his public push back in national interviews against Trump led to threats against him and his wife, which necessitated protection by state troopers.

The path Duncan is currently taking is perilous, because nine months removed from the White House, Trump remains very popular with most Republican voters and extremely influential with GOP politicians. The former president continues to play a kingmaker’s role in party politics and teases another presidential run in 2024. But he also continues to re-litigate his 2020 loss to Biden and pushes for election audits in numerous states across the country.

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