Michigan GOP has been a dumpster fire for last decade. It's like they are trying to emulate the late 90s- early 00s Illinois GOP. Leaders more interested in diddling kids and each other, than winning elections. The fact the state party couldn't get the high profile candidates for governor on the ballot, just reeks of the most basic political incompetence.
Dems have consistently used ballot initiatives to outwit State GOP leadership, which admittedly isn't very hard to do. Not to mention during COVID struggles State House and Senate leadership let Whitmer set the tone for the debate. Of course they did the same for the election. Current party activists have little understanding of recent Michigan political history, and fall into traps that previous GOP folks have already exposed.
Detroit area isn't the problem for GOP, in Michigan. It is the loss of the GR area being the back stop to make up for it. Michigan GOP has very little appeal in suburban areas. Trump won some of these areas in 2016. He didn't even compete there in 2020.
This was due to some of his missteps that related to Michigan directly. His failure to get involved ,or seem to be involved, in the UAW- Big 3 contracts really hurt him, with people who voted for him in 2016, but didn't in 2020. That and the fact he did nothing to bring back the jobs that Obama's auto czar sent to Mexico and China. This get s into the failure of the state party not having any basic knowledge or understanding of Michigan's largest industry. The state GOP and Trump's campaign in 2020 should have made Biden own the forced transferral of the Tier 2 and 3 factories by Obama's auto czar to China and Mexico. But they never even brought it up during the 2020 or 22 elections.
