With each terrible bill House Democrats continue to push, they are offering Republicans an important reminder: The GOP can’t afford to throw away more elections like it did in Georgia.
Former President Donald Trump and his allies have continued to claim it was the Senate GOP that gave away the Georgia Senate runoffs by not supporting $2,000 stimulus checks. Of course, it was Trump who suddenly decided to undermine his own negotiator and make those checks the issue in the first place, but that doesn’t matter anyway.
It was Trump’s repeated assertions that Georgia’s elections were hopelessly rigged and that the presidency was stolen from him that lost Georgia. Areas where Trump got more support in Georgia saw a greater decrease in turnout for the Senate runoffs than areas that were less supportive. Meanwhile, Trump focused on Georgia only to attack Republicans, not Democrats. Trump gave away the Georgia Senate race, a fact that he is happy about.
Republicans have already paid the price. Opposition to President Biden’s worst nominees, such as Health and Human Services nominees Xavier Becerra and Rachel Levine, now relies on peeling away centrist Democrats in the Senate. The Senate advanced Biden’s boondoggle “coronavirus relief” bill by a vote of 51-50, thanks to Democratic Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
And Republicans can’t afford to give up any more ground in the Senate. Only a handful of Senate Democrats still support the legislative filibuster. As Montana Sen. Jon Tester showed in his quick about-face on the issue, they still can’t be relied on to maintain that opposition in the future.
House Democrats are showing Republicans what that future looks like. They’ve pushed through a horrible police reform bill, which labels any disparity in race or gender as profiling. They pushed through an abomination of an election reform bill that would nationalize election rules and prevent states from keeping their elections secure. Gun control is next on the docket, and it isn’t unrealistic to think that some version of the Green New Deal would be looming on the horizon.
Democrats don’t have enough votes in the Senate to follow through on those yet. But Trump is still going to whine about the fact that he lost to a bumbling fool like Biden, if his latest public appearance is any indication. Whether he runs for president again or not, Republicans can’t afford to let Trump or anyone else just give away elections to Democrats, especially in the Senate. Giving Democrats a clear majority in a unified Congress would be a catastrophe that Republicans, and the country, just can’t afford.
