Trump as GOP nominee makes Ga. lawmaker 'incredibly fearful'

A longtime Macon Republican lawmaker said he was prepared for the worst when he circulated a four-paragraph “manifesto” naming the things he thinks the GOP is doing to drive itself to extinction.

“But the opposite has happened,” state Rep. Allen Peake said. He said there has been some negative feedback, but the response to his criticism of the GOP has been overwhelmingly positive. He said he’s heard from people who said they felt the same way, and they are glad someone said it out loud.

That list of threats to the GOP’s future, he thinks, includes the nomination of Donald Trump for president and a failure to try to appeal to people of color, gay people and millennials.

Trump as the GOP nominee “makes me incredibly fearful for the future of our party,” Peake wrote in the manifesto.

Trump has recently said he regrets some remarks he’s made on the campaign trail, in a speech that also touched on law and order and vetting of immigrants.

But Peake mentioned more than Trump. He said that African-American and Hispanic voters would support the GOP if it stuck to an agenda focused on the jobs and economy. He also wrote that Republicans have made themselves enemies of gay people and that millennials have written off the party.

“Clearly we have been complacent in not going after demographic groups that are growing in our country,” Peake said in discussing the manifesto. “It’s going to require policy changes, time, energy and money.”

Peake himself remains as conservative as much of the GOP and its Georgia voters. He believes marriage is between a man and a woman. He’s firmly against recreational marijuana.

But he also denounced a bill that would have allowed businesses to deny services to gay people.

And he thinks sticking to some of the positions that some Republicans take is not going to serve the party well.

Take illegal immigration. He’s careful to say amnesty is not appropriate, but he thinks that for people who have been in the U.S., pay taxes and haven’t been in trouble with the law, it would be a good idea to set up some kind of work permit.

Or take cannabis, the cause for which he’s probably best known. He authored the bill that created the state’s medical cannabis registry. Now he wants medical cannabis to be cultivated in the state so Georgians can get it more safely and easily. He’s gotten some GOP support for the bill, but some of the state’s most powerful Republicans, including Gov. Nathan Deal, are not on board.

Peake said he thinks opposition to medical cannabis is one of the issues that could lose the GOP a generation of voters.

But he’s also thinking of the next 20 or 30 years when he’s thinking about a Trump vote. The next president looks sure to make at least one nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, a person who will interpret laws for a generation.

Asked about voting for Trump, Peake said, “I’ve made it clear I’m not voting for Hillary (Clinton), and if I do vote for Trump it will only be because of the Supreme Court nominations.”

This story was originally published August 22, 2016 at 6:53 PM with the headline "Trump as GOP nominee makes Ga. lawmaker 'incredibly fearful'."