Posted on 02/04/2021 9:47:00 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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:
Story of the lost #GASen runoffs: Decreased GOP turnout pic.twitter.com/grZnpYHeMC— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) January 15, 2021
More data, via the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
Over 752,000 Georgia voters who cast ballots in the presidential election didn’t show up again for the runoffs just two months later, according to a new analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of recently released voting records. More than half of the no-shows were white, and many lived in rural areas, constituencies that lean toward Republican candidates...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."...The AJC’s analysis found that the drop in turnout was most severe in northwest and South Georgia, areas where Trump held rallies, in Dalton and Valdosta, to bolster support for the state’s Republican senators.
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":
"It was a hostage situation every day," said one Republican strategist familiar with the campaigns who only agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. "We were always trying to guard against the tweet [from Trump]," the strategist said. "Every week we had some new sort of demand," said another strategist involved with the campaigns. "Calling for the hand recount. The signature match. A special session. $2,000 [coronavirus relief] checks. Objecting to the electors." "It was, 'If you do not do this, the president will actively work against you and you will lose,' " he recalled.
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:
That is exactly what many Russians say. Why vote if the whole system is rigged? That being said if you overwhelm the polls then cheating becomes much more difficult. That is why people said before the election Trump would have to win past the margin of fraud.
Guy Benson, a fox News nevertrump rino, wants everyone to beleive the election was fair and u biased. He doesn’t want you to beleive what you saw happen when they shut down the counting with Republicans ahead, and want you to beleive that somehow the majority of ballots left to count were heavily democrat.
1. Laziness. There are far too many voters who simply don't care enough to get out and vote for a special election.
2. Awful candidates. Even Donald Trump couldn't motivate his own base to get out and vote for the two inept losers who were running on the GOP ticket.
“If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self defense, which is paramount to all positive forms of government...”
—Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers No. 28.
Do FReepers fight for truth? Do they even know who the enemy is? Do they think that DC somehow resembles the government which USConstitution requires?
“The duty of a true Patriot is to protect his country from its government.”
—Thomas Paine
I'm so damn discouraged....but I will always vote......
There are several of these mouth breathing morons here.
“Dur hur... Imz a Cowardz and I DONT VOTEZ NO MOOOOOOOR.”
The two GA candidates were completely uninspiring. If Collins would have been running instead of Loeffler, I think he could have gotten Perdue over the hump by bringing out more “R” voters.
Go away.
The truth hurts you.
We lost the election, the left brought out their side in unprecedented numbers
We got screwed by not taking advantage of mail in ballots
We told out people to vote on election day and risk the virus
That cost us ballots
Exactly! We should focus our time, money, effort and votes at the state level. Make DC irrelevant. Many state level elections can be won with less than a thousand votes. A solid conservative state can codify and nullify DC socialism. Once that happens it matters little who has the majority in DC.
Come 2022 DC republicans are going to be cast out to sea without a paddle.
RE: Awful candidates.
As if the alternative ( the Democrats ) were not even more awful ( an understatement ).
“This won’t be popular here, but I fully believe it. People believed the election was stolen, that their vote didn’t matter, etc., and stayed home.”
Correct. No many how many R’s voted there will always be more D votes because the D’s count the votes.
No evidence was presented, just conspiracy theories
That has been my problem with this and I explained it numerous times.
The left beat us, they good a job of doing it and they worked for 4 years perfecting it while we just made stupid memes and called them names.
I admire their work and effort here.
The cherry on top for them was them making us think they stole it. They love it.
Our side is keeping our side home. We could have won both of the GA senate seats but instead of building up support and getting our side out. We told our side that the system was “rigged” based on conspiracy theories of idiot lawyers looking to write their next book. Which kept people home and the Dems won both senate seats
Good for them
They out smarted us
We need to home to reality on all of this.
Exactly so. Well said.
Yep, that was obvious
The public lost faith in the voting system in Georgia. At first, it was a loss of faith in the SOS. Then that spread to a loss of faith in the Governor, the Lt. Governor and the AG. The perception is that there are too many ties to China.
There has been no open, transparent audit of the elections. This has to be addressed.
The legislature has taken little to no action to address the November election or future elections. So people are much less motivated to vote for any of the incumbents in the future. Sure, a few laws will be passed, but not enough to ensure valid elections. And the computerized system is tainted now. Any system that has the potential to be compromised remotely cannot be trusted for a fair election. It is as simple as that.
There were rumors that the legislature was afraid to take action because of the potential of Antifa/BLM riots. There were probably other things to affect their actions that have not been made public.
I anticipate that we are going to see Georgia turn blue, even though it is a red state.
To solve the problem, I would recommend an independent body be established to secure the architecture of the voting system. But there are a number of things that need to be done, and anyone who pushes full reform is going to be targeted. So it probably will not get done.
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