President Trump has said that he will travel to Georgia to campaign for Republican senators ahead of their January runoff. He will need to clean up the mess he created.
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel was confronted by some Trump supporters asking why they should bother caring about the Georgia Senate runoffs. This was always the worry with the claims of rigged elections in Georgia. Now, Trump has chosen to reinforce the counterproductive views of these supporters by attacking the Republican governor and Republican secretary of state as Republicans scramble to defend their control of the Senate.
Georgia has already counted its votes twice now. Another recount is underway, and there is nothing to suggest that Trump can somehow make up a deficit of more than 12,000 votes. There is no avenue of victory for Trump: The presidential election is over.
This has been the case for some time, and instead of accepting the reality and preparing for the future, Trump sent his legal team out to press conferences to make ludicrous claims it refused to pursue in court. With respect to Georgia, this meant propping up attorney Sidney Powell, who has said that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp accepted “financial benefits” to throw the election to Joe Biden.
The Georgia Senate races will decide if Mitch McConnell will lead Republicans in being a bulwark against the excesses of a Biden administration and Nancy Pelosi’s House Democrats. If Republicans lose both races, Chuck Schumer will be calling the shots in the upper chamber, giving Democrats unified control of the elective branches of the federal government.
Trump’s Stacey Abrams impression in Georgia has done nothing to help anybody but Schumer and his Democratic candidates. It’s not going to help Trump miraculously hold the presidency, and it has actively harmed Republicans’ chances of holding the Senate majority. What’s worse is that it has helped to legitimize the bogus claims of rigged elections that Democrats have trotted out after various defeats in 2016, 2018, and even 2020.
If Trump wants to run for president again or continue to maintain a role in the Republican Party moving forward, he has to clean up the mess he has created in Georgia. Losing the presidency to an invisible candidate like Biden is one thing: handing Schumer control of the Senate because you can’t handle that loss is another, and it would be unforgivable.
