Opinion: Donald Trump’s rewrite in Georgia

“The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal consciously continues to fight for globalist policies, such as bad trade deals, open borders and endless wars that favor other countries and sell our great American workers, and they fight for RINOS that have so badly damaged the Party Republican, ”Trump said in a statement. “It is where they are and always will be. Fortunately, no one cares more about The Wall Street Journal editorial. “

For someone who says we don’t care, he certainly spends a lot of time reading and responding to us. Thanks for the attention.

What really seems to irritate the most famous resident of Mar-a-Lago is not a caricature of our political differences. It is that we recognize the reality that Trump is the main reason why Republicans lost two contests for the Georgia Senate in January and therefore the majority in the Senate. Mr. Trump refuses to take responsibility for these defeats, contrary to all the evidence.

Trump’s statement attributes Georgia’s losses to Republican Governor Brian Kemp and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell. His criticism of Kemp is that he did not fight hard enough to nullify the loss of the state by the president in November, a statement that Trump made his main campaign topic before the Georgia Senate election on January 5.

All the polls showed that the best argument for electing the two Republicans was as a barrier against a fully democratic government. But instead of making that clear to voters, Trump focused on his complaints against Kemp and his claims that the election was stolen. Trump told Republican voters that November’s votes made no sense, so it’s no surprise that turnout dropped in January. As FiveThirtyEight found, “The better Trump did in a county in November, the more his turnout tended to drop in the second round” in January.

Mr. Trump also blames “McConnell’s refusal to go above $ 600 per person in stimulus check payments when the two Democratic opponents were touting $ 2,000 per person in ad after ad.” This rewrites history.

Trump’s Treasury Secretary announced support for the $ 600 checks on December 8, and the Republican Party supported the proposal. He did not endorse the $ 2,000 checks until December 22, giving Democrats a sword against the two Republican Senate candidates who had endorsed $ 600. The two ended up endorsing $ 2,000, but they seemed to have no principles in doing so. Trump’s $ 2,000 flip-flop defeated his own party’s candidates.

“Even more stupid,” adds Trump, “the National Republican Senatorial Committee has spent millions of dollars on ineffective TV ads starring Mitch McConnell.” This is also false. We were told that the Senate committee spent only about $ 90,000 on ads that ran on national cable to raise money. They raised about $ 6 million, which was spent on ads in Georgia that featured Senate candidates, not McConnell.

We rehearse all of this because it is important for the future of the GOP. In Trump’s only term, Republicans lost the House, the White House, and finally the Senate. How can it be that everyone, except the most prominent Republican in the country, is responsible for the victories, but not for the defeats that left the Republicans in the desert?

Losing to Joe Biden, of all people, and by 7.1 million votes as incumbent president, must be painful. Counseling may be in order. Any good analyst will explain that the first step towards recovery is to accept reality. The same applies to Republican voters who want to win back Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024.