Tuesday will see the end of the two-monthslong battle in Georgia, determining whether Joe Biden’s presidency and Nancy Pelosi’s House majority will be hampered by a Republican Senate or skate by with the thinnest of Democratic majorities. Republicans are doing their best to throw away their chances.
In the face of unified Democratic messaging, Republicans have scrambled themselves in the service of President Trump’s election fraud claims and their own 2024 ambitions. Trump has been the source of the discordant messaging, focusing his fire more on Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state than on Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
Trump is once again campaigning in Georgia for Republicans just days after saying that Georgia’s current runoffs are “illegal and invalid” and a leaked audiotape showed him asking Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find 11,000 more votes for him in Georgia’s presidential election results.
Now, senators such as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz are looking to boost their 2024 credentials by making a big show of their support for Trump’s claims, despite it being clear that Trump did, in fact, lose Georgia and other key swing states. It’s an odd stunt to pull while also arguing that Ossoff and Warnock are radicals who will help Democrats damage our norms and institutions.
Polls have both Democrats running ahead of GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, respectively. While pollsters overestimated the strength of Democrats in 2020, it is clear that Democrats have the momentum. While Perdue did escape Election Day with more votes than Ossoff, Trump still lost to Biden, and his insistence in relitigating that loss threatens to drown Perdue and Loeffler along with him.
Losing both Senate seats would be the difference between a Mitch McConnell-led bulwark against a Biden presidency and Chuck Schumer pulling out as many procedural tricks as he can to push liberal legislation through the upper chamber. It is also the difference between shooting down Biden’s more egregious nominees, like pro-abortion culture warrior Xavier Becerra, and watching 50 Democratic senators plus Kamala Harris usher him into Biden’s Cabinet.
The 2020 presidential election is over. Jockeying for 2024 could certainly have waited another couple of weeks. Republicans can’t afford to lose the battle right in front of them by fighting the one that came before or looking forward three years to the ones yet to come. Tomorrow will tell if they managed to place themselves behind the eight ball.
