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ATLANTA (AP) – Merchandise featured in Senator Kelly Loeffler’s online campaign store includes T-shirts and bumper stickers bearing Donald Trump’s name and the message, “My President Again.”
The Georgia Republican is airing television commercials ahead of Tuesday’s second round of Senate elections that castigate his opponent, Reverend Raphael Warnock, as “dangerous” and “radical.”
Loeffler’s colleague Senator David Perdue, meanwhile, warns Georgians that Democrats will adopt a “socialist agenda” if his challenger, Jon Ossoff, wins on Tuesday.
In the last days of the campaigns which will decide the control of the American Senate, the elected Republicans appeal to the most conservative part of the electorate. Their constant embrace of the far-right wing, Trump, of the GOP – repeatedly refusing to acknowledge Trump’s defeat – and their caricatures of Democratic challengers may seem like a risky approach in a state that narrowly voted for it. Democrat Joe Biden to the presidency in November after years of steady Democratic gains.
Yet the strategy reflects the prevailing wisdom of the GOP in the Trump era: Republicans’ clearest path to victory, even in swing states, is to garner support from a GOP base motivated by allegiance to the United States. president and fear of Democrats. Yet the approach comes at the expense of a once larger Republican coalition that included more urban and suburban moderates and GOP-leaning independents who rejected the Republican brand under Trump.
“The president resonates with a lot of people, just like buzzwords, so you hear ‘Trump’ and ‘socialism’ a lot,” said Michael McNeely, former vice president of the Republican Party of Georgia. “I wish we lived in a society where people were talking about ideas, but that’s just not where we are.”
Trump may have complicated Perdue and Loeffler’s bet even more with the way he handled his loss to Biden.
The president has spread unfounded claims of electoral fraud and lambasted Republican officials in Georgia, including Governor Brian Kemp, who defended the electoral process. When Trump allies, including Perdue and Loeffler, backed the claims, some Republicans expressed concern that it could discourage some Trump loyalists from voting in the second round. Now, other Republicans are worried that the GOP candidates have instead turned off more moderate voters rejected by Trump.
“No Republican is really happy with the situation we find ourselves in,” said Chip Lake, longtime GOP consultant and senior advisor to defeated Loeffler rival Rep. Doug Collins. “But sometimes when you play poker you have to play the hand that is dealt to you, and for us it starts with the president.”
Trump will travel to Georgia for a final rally with Loeffler on Monday evening, hours before the polls open. It is not known if Perdue will participate. The senator said Thursday he was in quarantine after being exposed to an aide who tested positive for coronavirus.
Democrats agree with the decision of GOP senators to pose as Trump’s Republicans and use exaggerated attacks. Opposition to the president has been a unifying force among their main supporters, and Democrats believe the Republicans’ overall tenor falls flat with voters in the middle.
“We’re talking about something like the expansion of Medicaid. We’re talking about expanding the Pell Grants “for low-income students,” Ossoff said during a recent stop in Marietta, north of Atlanta. “David Perdue denounces these things as socialism?”
Ossoff noted Perdue’s claims that a Democratic-led Senate would abolish private insurance; Ossoff and Warnock, in fact, support Biden’s proposal to add a federal insurance scheme to private insurance exchanges, not to abolish private insurance. “I just want people to have a choice,” Ossoff said.
The November returns demonstrate the GOP snare drum. Biden defeated Trump by around 12,000 out of 5 million votes cast in Georgia, making him the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992. Biden’s record-breaking vote total for a Democrat in the state was fueled by the racial and ethnic diversification of metropolitan areas, but also changes in key Atlanta suburbs where white voters have historically leaned Republican.
Still, Perdue landed a few thousand votes out of Trump’s total and led Ossoff by around 88,000 votes. The Republican turnout also rose in small towns and rural areas, while Georgia’s Democrats had a disappointing general election, failing to make the expected gains in legislative races.
“We’ve won this race once before,” Perdue said at some of his campaign stops, echoing his advisers’ belief that their top priority is to keep Trump’s grassroots enthusiastic. They add that they may corral the narrow slice of swing voters with arguments that warn of Democrats’ control of the House, Senate and White House.
Lake and McNeely, however, predicted that far-right attacks and Trump-centric appeals will not deliver votes beyond the grassroots, especially amid a publicity crash in a second-round campaign which total expenses could exceed $ 500 million.
“We hit the point of diminishing returns a long time ago,” Lake said.
They also lamented Trump’s lingering grievances about his defeat even after his own attorney general said there was no evidence the election was marred by fraud and the country’s courts dismissed the challenges. of the result.
“If for some reason the Republican candidates lose,” Lake said, “it will be difficult to write a postmortem on this second round and not look directly at all the chaos that has been created over voter fraud. .
Early voting ended on Thursday with just over 3 million Georgians voting by mail or in person. That drags the final early vote count of 3.65 million ahead of the general election. But early voting has already set a record for second-round participation in Georgia.
Jen Jordan, a Democratic state senator who won a long-time Republican-owned suburban Atlanta district of Atlanta in 2017, acknowledges her party has also shifted to grassroots strategy. But Jordan argued that Democrats are increasingly rooting their case in political ideas, especially on access to healthcare and public education, which she says are very appealing. She said Perdue and Loeffler undermined their warnings of “socialism” by separating from most Republicans in Congress to support the president’s call for pandemic aid payments of $ 2,000 to individual Americans.
“I’ve never heard the word socialism so much in my life, and then they’re both like, yeah, let’s give everyone $ 2,000 checks,” Jordan said.
McNeely, the state’s former GOP chief, lamented that even though Perdue and Loeffler win, their campaigns take Georgia away from a more centrist tradition. He cited Republican Senator Johnny Isakson, whose retirement paved the way for Kemp to appoint Loeffler.
Unlike many Southern Republicans of his generation, Isakson was never a Democrat. But it made it through the Georgia General Assembly at a time when Democrats dominated the state. In Washington, Isakson was a reliable Republican vote but avoided partisan contests and intensely avoided talking about Trump as much as possible.
“Sen. Isakson has learned to see it from a different perspective, “McNeely said, adding that Republican politicians should” think beyond campaigns and what the president thinks “and that more voters should decide that” it doesn’t. not make you a bad guy or a girl because you compromise. ”
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