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Is Trump damaging the chances of Republican victory in Georgia?

Donald Forbes
December 4, 2020

Donald Trump is visiting the state of Georgia on Saturday, who will be voting for their two Senate seats on January 5th. But with Trump continually alleging voter fraud, the divisions in the Republican party could hinder their chances in this close race, argues Donald Forbes.

Donald Trump's worst characteristics, the ego and indiscipline on overdrive that cost him the presidency, are on display in the last fight of this election for Georgia's two Republican-held senate seats, both of which are on a knife edge.

Trump's floundering and almost certainly doomed fight to prove he was robbed of a second White House term by cheating democrats, is putting both in danger.

If Republicans hold at least one seat, the party retains control of the senate 51-49 and will maintain a powerful restraint on President Joe Biden. If both are lost, Democrats will control the senate, via vice-President Kamala Harris's casting vote, as well as the House and the White House. All Washington will be theirs.

Republicans will be political bystanders nationally at least until the 2022 midterms leaving Biden and the Democrats free to pursue a leftwing wish list that includes a radical overhaul of the congress that will greatly increase their future hold on power.

With so much at stake, Republicans should be united behind their candidates in the Georgia election on January 5. Instead, they are the confused victims of a fight between Trump and the state party over his claim that he was defrauded of victory in the state which Biden won 49.5 per cent to Trump's 49.3 per cent, a difference of 12,000 votes.

Trump accused Georgia's Republican governor Brian Kemp of being hapless and the Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of being "an enemy of the people" for not being tougher on fraud. He said matching signatures on postal ballot with those on record "would provide a goldmine of votes" for him.

He claims the January 5 elections held under the same rules and unresponsive local. Republican leadership would allow Democrats to cheat their way to victory again. At the very least, his implication that the fight is lost in advance could be self-fulfilling by demotivating Republicans voters to turn out.

One Republican candidate has a one point lead and the other is one point behind. Although it normally goes Republican, the result could go either way.

Trump will campaign for the Republican candidates in Georgia on December 5 but given his grievances and his unpredictability, it's a tossup whether he'll do more harm than good.

As far as the legitimacy of the broader presidential election result is concerned, Trump has been abandoned by his Attorney General William Barr who has said there is no evidence of widespread election fraud. Trump fired the head of the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security agency for disloyalty after he told the media "this was a seamless election".

The legal team fighting to prove the November 3rd election was massively rigged is disunited in itself and has been rebuffed by court after court in its challenges for which they have lacked proof.

Biden, whom Trump acknowledges is president-elect though he hasn't conceded his loss, has been serenely putting his administration together in the meantime.

One question is what sort of future is left for the Republican party? And what will come of Trump's reputation after this defeat, particularly if the Georgia seats are lost due to his selfish behaviour.

Former Daily Telegraph owner Conrad Black, a staunch Trump supporter, believes Trump with his 73 million voters will have the Republican party in his pocket under Biden. The man himself has talked of running again in 2024, which sounds like the bluster of an egomaniac.

The fact is that without the White House he has no base in the Republican party. There is reason to believe the GOP establishment are well rid of him and his unpresidential antics. Even if the Georgia senate seats are lost, the rest of the party did well in the state and congressional elections that were held on November 3rd. The repudiation was of Trump.

Republicans are well placed to capture the House and senate seats in the midterms when the party that holds the presidency is historically vulnerable to voter second thoughts, which is why Biden has a narrow window of opportunity.

They also have the well regarded outgoing vice-President Mike Pence, a conventional safe pair of hands, in reserve as an alternative to Trump as party leader and contender at the next presidential election.

If the media can resist the temptation to pursue their tweeting war with Trump, which was vital to his voracious appetite for publicity, he could find himself slipping off the political radar quite quickly, despite talk of setting up a Trump TV channel. He won't stop talking, but will anyone be listening?

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Donald is a retired journalist who wrote for the Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, and Reuters. He was a chief correspondent in Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia. Donald now regularly writes for The Conservative Woman.

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