Karen Handel Condemns David Perdue’s Disrespect for Grassroots

Candidate says grassroots Republican involvement ‘got us in this mess’

ATLANTA, GA – Former Secretary of State Karen Handel released the following statement condemning David Perdue’s comments in the Atlanta Journal Constitution implying grassroots Republican involvement “got us in this mess”:

“I am dismayed by David Perdue’s condescending, disrespectful comments about the wonderful people that are the GOP grassroots. These men and women are the heart and soul of both the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement. They man the phone banks, knock on doors, walk in the parades, and, yes, lick the envelopes containing materials about our Party’s message and its candidates.

“They do not volunteer their time and sweat equity in hopes of being ‘tapped one day to run for Congress,’ as David seems to think. They do it for a cause greater than themselves – to elect Republicans who will advance conservative principles. Most importantly, the Grassroots are the voting base of our Party – the people who, election after election, year after year, show up at the polls and vote. They not only deserve, but they have earned the respect of ANY candidate who is asking for their vote.

“David says his failure to participate in the electoral process doesn’t matter. This isn’t about whether or not David has volunteered or licked envelopes. This is about whether or not he has exercised one of our most important rights and obligations as citizens of this great nation. David says he’s a Republican, but he hasn’t had enough conviction for conservative principles or candidates to bother to vote in regular Republican primaries in two decades – except for the primary last month when his name was on the ballot. He is standing before Georgia Republicans asking us to do for him what he has failed to do.

“Perdue’s positions on the issues change with the wind. He says he’s against amnesty, yet, he was on the board of a group that lobbied for amnesty. He says he’s against Obamacare, but he previously called for a ‘federal solution to the uninsured.’ He rails against spending but he took his place at the trough so that his company got millions in President Obama’s stimulus, even as grassroots conservatives were in the trenches fighting against the waste.

“With no record of voting in Republican primaries and a long list of flip flops, we just don’t know if what David says now is what he really believes or if it’s just political expediency. What we do know is that David Perdue is certain that he gets it, while the rest of us don’t. We’ve got enough people in Washington who think they are smarter and better than the rest of us.”