Why Republicans Really Lost In Georgia
It has nothing to do with Trump.
The GOPe and its affiliates in the NeverTrump movement have been quick to try and blame Trump for the recent Republican losses in Georgia. The problem is, Trump had nothing to do with those losses. The true cause of those losses was the very politics Trump once so boldly and effectively railed against.
There are three main reasons why Loeffler and Perdue lost. The first is that neither has any charm. They are not likable at all really. That goes for Loeffler in particular. She is the embodiment of the country club wing of the Republican Party. With a net worth of almost 1 billion dollars, everyday Georgians must have instinctively felt that this woman did not, and could not ever, truly represent their interests. She was an empty suit moreover. She didn’t really stand for anything, except a return to the GOP of old: tax cuts for the wealthy, lukewarm support for, or even soft opposition to, the more populist and popular parts of Trump’s agenda, and complete detachment from the actual base of the party. Modern Americans do not want to hear trite talking points developed in the 1980s about American greatness. Those days are long gone. That is simply not a recipe for electoral success now, and so she lost pretty resoundingly, more resoundingly actually than Perdue.
The second reason is demographic change. This ain’t Ray Charles’ Georgia anymore. In 1970, a mere 50 years ago, Georgia was 75% white. Blacks constituted one quarter or so of the state population. There were no other demographic categories worth mentioning in the state then. Today, blacks are one third of the population in Georgia, hispanics almost 10%, and Asians and mixed-race individuals together make up more than 5% of the population. Georgia is on the precipice of being officially majority-minority. That threshold is only a decade or two away. Fewer whites mean less GOP support, every time. As Ann Coulter is fond of writing, “demography is destiny”. Georgia is now a solidly purple state and trending bluer every year. That is not Trump’s fault. It is far more the fault of the corrupt duopoly we live under, which of course includes the GOP. In order to serve corporations which crave cheap labor, Republicans made a deal with the devil long ago, a deal that is suicidal to their supposed ideals, along with their long-term political prospects. Mass-scale third world immigration is decimating the Republican Party.
The third main reason the Republican candidates lost in Georgia is Mitch McConnell. Forget the fact that McConnell stymied Trump’s agenda every step of his presidency, all the while pretending to be his ally. A mere week before the Georgia election, he prevented a Trump-backed COVID relief bill from being passed in the Senate. Talk about Georgian Roulette! The $2000 stimulus check Trump called for was a broadly popular policy. Broadly popular. Nearly three fourths of Republican voters supported it. Even Newt Gingrich went out on a limb to state, “This is an 80% issue. People get it. Billions for the banks, billions for big companies, but we can’t find $2000 for everyday Americans.” No matter how Republicans try to spin it, it is hard to win elections if your policies are immensely unpopular.
Furthermore, the thiccer stimulus was popular for good reason. Trump’s political instincts were once again right, and GOPe policy was once again wrong. Regardless of how you feel about government spending, government debt, and the social safety net more generally, Americans are suffering, and they are not suffering due to any fault of their own. They are suffering under the hysterical, tyrannical COVID policies of Democrat state governors. That is the plain truth, that is how it is, and the federal government can not do all that much about that. It can not force Neo-Bolshevik tyrants to open their states up. Our federal system does not permit a national override of this nature.
It is naked folly to institute policies based upon a world that you wish was. Yet this is how Republican thought leaders were reasoning on the subject. They were essentially arguing, “Congress should just say no to stimulus checks because we should open the economy back up”. That’s great obviously, the mask mandates and lockdowns should end, but Congress can’t control that. Congress can only control what it can control, and what it can control is national spending. Americans needed relief, the polling said they wanted it, but McConnell refused to deliver it to them, despite the fact that the leader of his own political party called for it. He did not say no to a gigantic military spending bill or billions upon billions for Israel or Pakistan or wherever. He said no to Americans who are suffering. Again, you can only spin that kind of trash policy so hard.
Ultimately, what is happening is exactly what I said would happen from the outset. The Republican establishment would continue to advocate for and institute idiotic policies under Trump which would lead invariably to electoral disasters (assuming of course no electoral shenanigans occurred in the Georgia races, which I concede might not be a safe assumption), but instead of taking responsibility for their own failures and adapting accordingly, prominent Republicans and allied normiecon and neocon pundits in the beltway and beyond, would try to take those massive election debacles and wrap them around Trump’s neck. That is their way back to the privatized gain and socialized loss, pro-business but anti-market (read: corrupt) policies which eviscerated America’s middle class over the course of the last half-century.
Our leaders believe they can sell the American people on anything, that they can manipulate any reality to their advantage. They really believe we are that stupid. Thus, they will use their own mistakes and misdeeds as proof that Trump is awful and racist, and the kinds of things Trump campaigned on could never, ever be successful or popular in a diverse, multicultural America. Nothing could be further from the truth though. The recent Republican losses in Georgia were not a repudiation of Trumpism, they were a repudiation of GOPe policies themselves, which put oligarchs and avarice first, and ordinary people last. If you let them convince you the opposite is true, that Trump is the problem, and only a return to conservative politics as usual can save you, you will have proved them right: you will indeed believe anything.
