The Georgia Senate Debacle Has Many Fathers

F rom November 2002 until January 4, 2021, Republicans did not lose a single Senate race in Georgia. This past week, they lost two in one night.

It’s commonly said that victory has many fathers while defeat is an orphan, but the debacle in Georgia had more than a few parents. The Georgia runoffs revealed in stark relief the structural weaknesses that have frustrated Republicans in the Trump era, as Donald Trump’s personality politics could not make up for the Republican policy vacuum.

In his effort to remain the dominant figure of American politics even in the waning days of his term, Donald Trump played a central role in Tuesday’s results. The January runoffs could have been a referendum on giving Democrats full control of Washington. Instead, Trump made them about contesting the November election. His campaign to overturn the election drowned out other critical messaging. On-the-fence voters in Georgia were reminded of why they voted against the Republican presidential nominee in November. Moreover, the president’s continued attacks on top Republicans in Georgia, such as Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, divided the state party when it most needed discipline and unity. (For their part, some top Georgia Republicans leaned into this battle with the president, upsetting some of his most devoted supporters.)

In order to please the president, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler went along with his attacks on their fellow Georgia Republicans and pledged to contest the election in Congress. Both Perdue and Loeffler had weaknesses as candidates, to be sure, and the overturn-the-election sideshow did not help their campaigns.

But policy choices played a role in the January drubbing, too. In his (eventually withdrawn) threat to the December spending package, President Trump demanded widespread $2,000 relief checks. Whatever its policy merits, direct-cash stimulus polls well. However, in announcing this demand after the spending bill had already been negotiated and passed by both chambers of Congress, the president put congressional Republicans in a tight spot.

The direct-cash plan flew through the House only to hit a dam in the Senate. Mitch McConnell’s career as Senate majority leader has been marked by big political gambles, such as blocking the Merrick Garland nomination in 2016 and pushing through Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination in the waning days of the 2020 campaign. In the lead-up to the January runoffs, he made another gamble and blocked a stand-alone vote on the stimulus checks.

Whether $2,000 checks would have gotten to 60 votes remains an open question (though it seems quite possible), but the fact that the GOP-held Senate blocked them gave Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff a potent political weapon. Both pledged that, if Democrats won the Senate, they would bring those checks up for a vote. The high-stakes bets of Senate Republicans on judicial nominations might have upset Democrats, but they also rallied GOP voters; blocking the checks, however, had the downsides of those past gambles without the benefits.

In the January runoffs, then, Republicans faced a political Bermuda Triangle. The president’s war with Georgia Republicans split the party and alienated middle-of-the-road voters. Trumpworld elevated voices, such as Lin Wood, urging Republicans not to vote in the January runoffs because elected Republicans had supposedly been insufficiently loyal to Trump and had not done enough to reverse the allegedly “hacked” election. The GOP’s refusal to pass expanded direct-cash benefits hurt the party with blue-collar voters. All that depressed Republican turnout.

Meanwhile, a coordinated grassroots effort and clear policy message helped buoy Warnock and Ossoff. In many heavily Republican counties, David Perdue did a few points worse against Jon Ossoff than he did in November. A preliminary analysis by Nate Cohn at the New York Times found that turnout compared to November 2020 was down more in strong Trump precincts than in ones that heavily favored Biden.

The Georgia runoffs highlighted two things that have hampered Republican efforts to forge a governing majority: outlandish personality politics and a lack of policy reform. The president’s escalating efforts to overturn the election were a turbocharged version of the norm-breaking that has characterized the Trump White House. Trump-as-showman might turn out key voters, but it’s not clear other candidates can copy his persona (and he did lose the popular vote in both his presidential runs). Moreover, constant provocation and grievance politics take a civic toll. The mayhem at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday — with mobs assaulting the process of democratic government — shows the consequences of recklessly stoking the flames of outrage. Maintaining republican order demands much more than the politics of anger.

A policy vacuum has political consequences, too. On the campaign trail, Perdue and Loeffler had lackluster policy messages. That policy vacuum made the battle over the $2,000 checks loom particularly large in the election. And, even though Perdue and Loeffler said they supported those checks, the Republican blockade in the Senate tied those candidates to the austerity politics that has all-too-often hurt Republicans at the polls.

If a combination of Very Online cultural feuds and stagnant corporatism can’t break 50 percent in Georgia, that might be a sign of the limits of that combination for Republicans. One of the themes of the past five years is that outrage politics and the absence of a forward-looking policy agenda are locked in a mutually reinforcing feedback loop. Republicans might find more political success by taking a step toward a reformist policy agenda that does more to promote families, work, and growth.