When Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp chose political neophyte Kelly Loeffler to replace Johnny Isakson in the Senate, he reportedly figured that she could stanch the quickening bleed of women's support for the Republican Party. Within exactly a year, she attracted a formidable primary contender in (soon-to-be former) Rep. Doug Collins and now apparently has lost in a disastrous runoff election to the Louis Farrakhan acolyte and military-hating Raphael Warnock, who may have run over his ex-wife's foot with a car.
Not even a politician as grounded in Georgia as David Perdue faced an easy race thanks to President Trump's insistence on lying that the 2020 election was stolen from him and thus convincing Peach State Republicans that their votes wouldn't matter. But Loeffler proved uniquely emblematic of all the wrong candidates in the Trump era, and she serves as a cautionary tale for the right side of the aisle going forward.
For starters, Loeffler's qualifications began with the sex of her birth and ended with the net worth of her husband. While one can note that she had a perfectly admirable business career considering the hindrances women have had to overcome, Loeffler catapulted from an MBA financed by land inherited from her grandparents to marrying her boss Jeffrey Sprecher, the CEO of the Intercontinental Exchange, just two years after arriving at the firm. Since then, Loeffler spent most of her time at the C-suite level of her husband's company, bought part of the Atlanta Dream WNBA team, and became CEO of an Intercontinental Exchange subsidiary.
This is a fine resume. It's even an acceptable one to put as a mere placeholder for a seat in a highly contentious state for one of the most highly contentious races in the nation's history.
But you do not put a placeholder in a seat that is all but open, tethering yourself to her indefinitely while an unhinged populist targets her from her right and a guy who may have run his ex-wife over with his car targets her from the left. In that case, you scour the state for the most qualified candidate who has somewhat of an electable streak.
I know I can write this piece because unlike my male colleagues, I cannot be crudely accused of sexism, and unlike plenty of other conservative commentators, I've written many, many screeds in favor of broadening the types of freedom fighters we elevate in our caucus, including women especially. And multiple Republican women, many of whom explicitly ran on being minorities who found freedom in America while their families fled communist hellholes, thrived in the 2020 election, delivering the party historic gains to the House. But Loeffler was a near-billionaire cosplaying as a hillbilly, and it felt insultingly uncomfortable to everyone watching. She tried to outflank Collins not by introducing bold new policies to curb our national debt or even to stick it to China or the World Trade Organization, but by campaigning with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the anti-Semitic QAnon supporter who trolled her way into the House.
But the House is not the Senate, and the race that winds up determining whether the upper body of Congress is controlled by a Republican like Mitt Romney or Susan Collins versus Vice President-elect Kamala Harris is not small potatoes.
This past year proved that Republicans can run on a strong law-and-order message with women and candidates of color and win in heavily diverse areas. Let Loeffler and her loss sound a message to the party about authenticity, and teach them that the culture wars, however enticing they may seem, must entail more than Twitter trolling and loyalty tests.
