The Georgia races represented an impressive breakdown of the four-year alliance of convenience between McConnell and Trump that helped conservatives achieve a number of long-standing political goals – but ended with the GOP losing the Senate. Things finally collapsed in mid-December, when McConnell recognized Democrat Joe Biden as president-elect, a statement that culminated in a tense phone call between Trump and McConnell, in which the president made his unhappiness clear.
It was the last time McConnell and Trump spoke before the second round.
Tension between Trump and the Republican Party in the Senate exploded on Wednesday when Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock had their victories confirmed and pro-Trump protesters stormed the Capitol to interrupt the counting of votes at the Electoral College. Before the Capitol breach, McConnell’s allies and other Republicans were pointing the finger directly at the president because of the defeats in Georgia.
Scott Jennings, a Kentucky-based Republican Party strategist and longtime confidant of McConnell, noted that the party had a weak participation in the conservative areas of Georgia, where Trump had strong support.
“This is because of him. He told them that their votes did not count and some of them listened, ”said Jennings.
Trump’s advisers retreated fiercely. They said that Republican representatives, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, ran uninspiring campaigns. They expressed disbelief that Perdue ran an ad on TV saying he was cleared of wrongdoing in allegations of insider trading, just giving them more attention. And they argued that the failure of Senate Republicans to approve $ 2,000 coronavirus aid payments was costly.
“Research shows that if the US Senate had approved $ 2,000 stimulus checks, we would be celebrating the elections for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler today. Senate Republicans have no one to blame but themselves, ”said Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign advisor.
While preparing for the second round, Senate Republicans found themselves in a dead end. To win, party strategists were convinced that they needed to find a way to win over the moderate suburbanites who were repulsed by Trump. But they felt that the president was hampering his work by recalling the idea that the election had been stolen from him, including in Georgia, which Biden narrowly won.
Republican Party officials conducted internal polls showing that moderate voters were especially receptive to the idea that a Republican-controlled Senate would provide a necessary check on the Biden White House. But Republicans concluded that they could not wage a campaign focused on control and balance because it would be an implicit acknowledgment that Trump had lost, something that would alienate the president and his supporters.
“Republicans had everything going for them in this race, except Trump. If this election were about checks and balances, the Republicans would have won. Instead, it was about Trump and his conspiracy theories, ”said Republican strategist Alex Conant, who was a key adviser in Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.
McConnell in particular expressed concern that Trump’s continued obsession with electoral fraud was creating a sense of chaos that shut down suburban people. But making inroads with the White House was difficult.
Senate Republicans have long considered Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a key liaison with the president. But when Georgia’s second round was in full swing, Kushner gradually withdrew from daily activities with the White House. Kushner, trying to distance himself from ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s conspiratorial legal effort to overturn the election, has recently spent much of his time in the Middle East.
McLaughlin, the NRSC’s executive director, had an open line of communication with Meadows. He communicated to the White House chief of staff that Trump’s attacks on Georgia’s electoral authorities were damaging the party’s prospects and that they needed Meadows’ help to stop Trump. But in mid-December, by the time McConnell publicly recognized Biden as president-elect, the chief of staff went out of business.
Those who reached the president got nowhere. In vain, Graham told the president that Democrats would try to undo their achievements if they gained control of the Senate.
Communication was cut off – and at the very least, Trump was stepping up his attack on Republicans in Georgia. The president used a December rally in Georgia to express support for a primary challenge against Republican governor Brian Kemp, which drew the president’s ire for failing to intervene in the state vote on Trump’s behalf. Later that month, the Trump campaign began running a TV ad focusing on electoral fraud in Georgia, colliding with the exit vote that Senate Republicans were trying to push.
To the annoyance of Republicans, the president refused to repudiate Georgia-based attorney Lin Wood, a Trump supporter who at one point suggested that Perdue and Loeffler be arrested for not doing enough to prevent electoral fraud.
And the weekend before the election, Trump was captured telling Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to put him at the top of the state. It was not the end of the election message that Republicans were looking for.
All the while, Loeffler and Perdue were under pressure to align themselves with the president. A few days after the November general election, they issued a statement asking Raffensperger, the state’s top voter, to step down.
“By constantly demanding a pledge of allegiance from Republican candidates, he basically froze them and made it almost impossible for them to run their own races. Instead, they were in a constant state of reaction to Trump and his whims – whims that were toxic in the most important suburban areas of the state, ”said Kevin Madden, a top adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.
Still, Trump and his administration invested heavily in Georgia races. The president made two field trips to Georgia, although he initially told advisers that his first event was “perfect” and a second stop was not necessary. He recorded automatic calls and video messages. Vice President Mike Pence made four trips to the state, and his first daughter, Ivanka Trump, was also a visitor. Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, organized a fundraiser.
But until the end, Trump remained firm: Georgia was full of fraud. The private Republican poll conducted in the days leading up to the second round showed that the president’s electoral fraud plots were at the top of the minds of Republican voters, thanks in part to a Trump-backed effort to thwart Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory.
And when election results rolled over on Tuesday night and Perdue and Loeffler were defeated, the president took to Twitter, where he praised the baseless conspiracy theories that Republicans blamed for erasing their majority in the Senate.