Confirmed: Stolen Election Claims Depressed GOP Turnout, Handed Democrats Georgia Senate Seats

During a week in which Democrats formally finalized their takeover of the US Senate's instruments of power, and flexed their legislative muscles by pushing through a party-line vote to pave the way for a massive spending bill, it seems like an opportune moment to reflect on how we got here. Republican voters largely held the line, despite a daunting Senate map, in November. After election night, it very much looked like Democrats would net just one single seat in the upper chamber, allowing Mitch McConnell to remain majority leader, and force the Biden administration into tough negotiations on a wide range of issues. All they had to do was not lose both Georgia runoffs, which seemed eminently achievable. After all, Republicans had received more votes than Democrats in both races in the first round, and the runoff format has traditionally heavily favored the GOP. But then January 5 happened, and the Democrats swept both contests.

As a result, Chuck Schumer is now majority leader, and Kamala Harris is the tie-breaking vote. In the immediate aftermath of that debacle, we cited early evidence that David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler lost because Democrats were united and motivated, while GOP turnout was underwhelming amid conspiracies and intra-party anger. Republican fears had come true. More support for this theory has continued to trickle in:

That quote from Mr. Roland must haunt Georgia GOP operatives' nightmares. When the most prominent and influential Republican in the country repeatedly and baselessly tells his ardent fans that the election was rigged and stolen – including by members of their own party, in their own state – a significant number of those fans will internalize and believe that message. Follow-up exhortations that they turn out to vote anyway will invariably fall on a lot of deaf ears. And that's precisely what happened. The "Trumpiest" areas (including the North Georgia district represented by a certain congresswoman who was a loud "stop the steal" adherent, and who evidently is predisposed to believe literally any conspiracy that crosses her desk) saw the biggest dips. The statistics tell the story, Allahpundit writes: "Eleven percent fewer whites who voted in the presidential election turned out for the runoffs. By comparison, just eight percent fewer black voters did. Warnock defeated Loeffler by 93,000 votes while Ossoff topped Perdue by just 55,000; the number of whites who showed up for the Trump/Biden race but didn’t show up for the Senate races was on the order of 400,000 people." And both GOP Senate candidates were essentially forced to go along with the incoherent, "stop the steal," but also vote' two-step, in what a former campaign official described as a daily "hostage situation":

Can't win races without the base, can't win races in certain key states and districts with only the base. That's the very real dilemma moving forward as the party goes to war with itself, replete with purges and loyalty tests. And the GOP fratricide runs a very serious risk of turning a red state into a purple state into a blue state in a matter of a few cycles. Internal Republican animosity and dysfunction are boosting Democrats in Georgia, to the point that at this stage, it's hard not to see both Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams as early frontrunners in the 2022 Senate and gubernatorial elections, respectively:

You said what I have been saying

Trump Team, if they had the evidence, real evidence, should have jumped on it with 100s of lawyers Nov 3rd/4th and started challenges, explained to the American public the legal issues and kept it to just those issues.

The Trump Team sucked at that and instead went with the lets see what we can find approach which was just a laundry list of conspiracy theories and endless nonsense that meant nothing.

Bush had a great team that stopped gore from stealing 2000

Trump had a bunch of washed out bozos who had zero business involved with any of this.

Bush v Gore was also a margin of 700 ballots in one state

Trump had a margin of 20,000 to 120,000 ballots in 5 states

It was a non starter

What the Uniparty can't have is more of the Democrat half behaving like the Republican half after too many Republican supporters walk away and it looks too obvious when it's exposed as big lie.

After the Uniparty proved in 2020 that they could rig an election in broad daylight with impunity with both the Democrats and Republicans in on it, what fool would vote in a rigged election?

We're going to witness incredible spin, gaslighting and Kabuki Theater as the Uniparty desperately tries to sell the lie that votes mean anything. The congress has no clothes and Democrat, Independent, and Republican voters can no longer tell themselves that their votes matter.

Politicians and the propagandists at ABCCBSCNNFOXNBCNPRNYTWAPO will go to extreme measures to sell the lie of election integrity because when votes don't matter, neither do politicians nor the propagandists who shill for them and they're desperate to keep their paychecks coming.

So much misinformation here peddled by this guy that it’s hard to get your arms around it.

“All [the Republicans] had to do was not lose both Georgia runoffs, which seemed eminently achievable. After all, Republicans had received more votes than Democrats in both races in the first round, and the runoff format has traditionally heavily favored the GOP. But then January 5 happened, and the Democrats swept both contests.

“... In the immediate aftermath of that debacle, we cited early evidence that David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler lost because Democrats were united and motivated, while GOP turnout was underwhelming amid conspiracies and intra-party anger. Republican fears had come true.”

“... Trump’s message that the election was stolen discouraged voters such as Craig Roland, a 61-year-old Rome resident. Roland said he didn’t believe his vote would count. “What good would it have done to vote? They have votes that got changed,” Roland said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever vote again.”

Hey, Guy: let me tell you something, fellow. Republican voters were not so much discouraged about the election, they were outraged that it was stolen. And they became even more outraged when Republican powder puffs like Raffensperger and Kemp refused to do anything meaningful about it but in fact aided and abetted it.

“... When the most prominent and influential Republican in the country repeatedly and baselessly tells his ardent fans that the election was rigged and stolen – including by members of their own party, in their own state – a significant number of those fans will internalize and believe that message. Follow-up exhortations that they turn out to vote anyway will invariably fall on a lot of deaf ears. And that’s precisely what happened.”

And the reason that appeals to vote in the runoffs fell “on a lot of deaf ears”? Not because Trump and millions of others were pointing to the fraud but because nothing was being done to meet the election theft head-on. So, Benson, have you drunk enough of Schumer’s kool-aid to think if Trump remained silent on the election results then Republican voters would have had a bigger turnout in Georgia’s runoffs? If Trump had not been there rallying the troops, it would not have been as close as it was. Republican voters were livid and disgusted that the Dims were getting by with election theft and establishment Republican office holders (Raffensperger, Kemp, et al.) were looking the other way, state legislatures
would not step up to investigate the fraud, and the courts refused to hear the cases because of court-made procedural issues. Perhaps you think if Trump kept quite you could have sent Cocaine Mitch in to drag Loffler’s and Perdue’s sorry rear ends across the finish line?
...

“Can’t win races without the base, can’t win races in certain key states and districts with only the base. That’s the very real dilemma moving forward as the party goes to war with itself, replete with purges and loyalty tests.”

I’ll tell you one thing: you can’t win races if you let blue states, blue counties, and blue cities get away with election fraud. No amount of being a good and cheerful loser is going to turn that around, Guy. So if you want to purge conservative voters who are unwilling to put up with Republican politicians who refuse to fight the Dims (though they will fight conservatives tooth and nail), go ahead. See how many elections you win with your pure moderate squishes.

“at this stage, it’s hard not to see both Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams as early frontrunners in the 2022 Senate and gubernatorial elections, respectively”

For once, I may agree with you. If the same election procedures are left in place in Georgia as prevailed in the Nov. and Jan. elections, the Dims will win them.

Keep your blindfold if you wish, Benson. But that’s not going to win many elections.

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