The Patriot Post® · In Brief: A Peach State Showdown
“Georgia Republicans, what do you want to do with your life?” So asks political analyst Jim Geraghty upon the announcement that former Senator David Perdue will mount a primary challenge against Governor Brian Kemp. Unity is going to be very important in Georgia. Will this do it?
After Georgians voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election from 1996 to 2016, elected Republicans in every gubernatorial election from 2002 to 2018, elected Republicans to control the state general assembly in every election since 2004, elected two Republican U.S. senators in every race since 2002, and electing Republicans in just about every statewide office during those same time periods … everything came crashing down in 2020.
Joe Biden won the state by 11,779 votes — yes, they counted, recounted, and audited the vote — and in the January Senate runoffs, Democrat Jon Ossoff beat David Perdue by 54,944 votes, and Democrat Raphael Warnock beat Kelly Loeffler by 93,272 votes. The fact that you may not like those results does not make them any less true or accurate.
One of the reasons that Ossoff and Warnock won was that a lot of white, rural Georgians who had voted in the November presidential election did not think it was worth voting in the Senate runoffs — after the president of United States had spent the past months insisting the Georgia election results were rigged.
We condemned Trump’s self-defeating narrative at the time of the runoff. A Democrat-controlled Senate has enabled Joe Biden to undo even more of Trump’s good work. But it appears Trump simply can’t let go of something he takes personally.
Now, former Senator Perdue is running for governor as a Republican, challenging incumbent Brian Kemp, on the key policy issue that Donald Trump really hates Brian Kemp. Not only is the former president seething with rage at Kemp for not overruling the election results and appointing pro-Trump electors, but he contended [Monday] that any Brian Kemp victory in the upcoming primary must be the result of voter fraud.
Geraghty quips:
Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump does not think that Donald Trump had anything to do with Republicans losing “two Senate seats and a Presidential victory in the Great State of Georgia.”
Perdue is echoing Trump’s arguments in his primary challenge, arguing that the governor and Secretary of State are to blame for GOP defeats in 2020.
Obviously, some things need to be settled in the Peach State. Geraghty concludes:
A unified Georgia Republican Party would be extremely difficult for Georgia Democrats to beat.
But if the party doesn’t unify behind whoever wins the primary, Stacey Abrams is probably going to be the next governor of Georgia. Her comeback narrative will be complete, she will instantly become a top-tier Democratic Party star, and there is an excellent chance that she will end up on a Democratic presidential ticket someday, perhaps as soon as 2028.
Several members of your Patriot Post team live in Georgia, and we’d prefer not to have Governor Stacey Abrams just so Donald Trump can exact revenge.