Georgia senate runoff losses all Trump’s fault

WASHINGTON — At his Georgia rally Monday night, President Donald Trump predicted the state’s senate runoffs: “If (Republicans) lose, they’re going to blame Trump.”

Well, it appears they did lose — and it is his fault.

After the November election, Trump had two responsibilities: Distribute the new coronavirus vaccines quickly and efficiently, and save the Republican Senate majority.

He failed at both. Vaccine distribution has been an inexcusable disaster. And on

Tuesday, Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R, lost to Raphael Warnock, D — a man who declared Americans could not serve both God and the military — while former Sen. David Perdue, R, is currently trailing Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff by more than 17,000 votes. ( EDITOR’S NOTE: Perdue later conceded to Ossoff.)

This is a catastrophe. … Democrats will preside over a one-party state. They can eliminate the filibuster and pass radical legislation without compromise or concessions. They will have the power to pack the courts, raise taxes, go on an unprecedented spending spree and lock in their Senate majority by making the District of Columbia a state, giving them two safe seats. The only thing standing in their way is the hope that Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., will stand with Republicans against his party’s president, majority leader and House speaker. Good luck with that.

As the leader of the Republican Party, it was Trump’s responsibility to prevent this outcome. He should have been campaigning nonstop for Perdue and Loeffler over the past six weeks. But instead, by his own admission, he focused “125 percent of my energy” on his

pathological campaign to reverse the results of the 2020 election.

Not only did he barely lift a finger to help Loeffler and Perdue, he actively undermined them. When Congress finally passed a $900 billion stimulus package, the senators should have been able to take credit for delivering emergency relief to struggling Georgians. Instead, Trump called the $600 stimulus checks in the bill his own administration negotiated “ridiculously low” and demanded $2,000 checks, which had no chance of approval in the GOP- controlled Senate. Biden seized on Trump’s blunder, promising Georgia voters that if they gave Democrats control of the chamber, the $2,000 checks would go out “immediately.”

Trump also put Loeffler and Perdue in an impossible bind by vetoing the defense authorization bill, which included a 3% military pay raise. Georgia has eight military bases and one of the country’s largest populations of active duty service members. Loeffler and Perdue should have been able to campaign on delivering for military families. Instead, the president forced them to choose between angering those military families by sustaining Trump’s veto or angering Trump’s loyal base by overriding it. So, they skipped the vote — angering both.

Worst of all, Trump dampened Republican enthusiasm by insisting the elections in Georgia are rigged. He declared on Twitter that the Georgia Senate races were “illegal and invalid.” His presidential campaign ran an ad in Georgia the week before the runoff not to promote Loeffler and Perdue, but urging voters to demand state legislators overturn the November election. Even at his Monday rally, the first words Trump uttered were, “There’s no way we lost Georgia. That was a rigged election.” Many Georgia Republicans believed his conspiracy-mongering and stayed home. According to the Cook Political Report, turnout in Whitfield County, where Trump held his rally, was 86.1% of November levels — below the statewide turnout of 89% of November levels.

If Trump were trying to depress GOP turnout, he could not have done a better job. Some have speculated that is exactly what he was doing — that he really didn’t want Loeffler and Perdue to prevail because if they won while he lost, it would have proved that the election was not rigged and that Georgia voters rejected him. Whether intentional or incompetent, his self- absorbed conduct over the past six weeks has been disastrous. He has driven away anyone willing to tell him the truth — that he lost a winnable election because he alienated too many Americans — and has surrounded himself with sycophants and enablers who indulge his penchant for conspiracy theories. He has shirked his responsibility to preside over a smooth presidential transition and the effective distribution of vaccines. And now, he may have delivered Democrats the power to reverse his legacy and irreversibly transform our country.

After he lost, I urged him in this space to focus on winning back the presidency in four years. If he led the GOP to victory in Georgia, it would have been the first step in his political restoration. But if he handed Democrats control of the Senate, he would go down in ignominy. The choice was his.

He chose ignominy. And now America may pay the price.