The Republican ‘Cope’

On the heels of the GOP’s utterly predictable loss in the Georgia Senate runoff last night, a segment of the right-wing internet is showing symptoms of a particularly serious case of what the kids — forgive me — often describe as “cope.” The net loss of a Republican seat in the U.S. Senate, we’re told, is everyone’s fault except for the Republican candidate himself, and the people who recruited him to run in the first place. 

Now, on policy grounds, I’m on the record as being quite sympathetic to the agenda and vision Trump ran on in 2016. I’m a nationalist, a culture warrior, a border hawk and immigration restrictionist, a proponent of more aggressive policy interventions to combat Big Tech, a regular critic of the Chamber of Commerce wing of the GOP, and a supporter of an economic agenda that favors the party’s working-class base — take your pick. So spare me the inevitable dismissal of these critiques as coming from some inchoate, squishy “establishment.” It continues to amaze me that so many conservatives who ostensibly share my policy priors insist that believing in that specific agenda requires willful blindness about obvious political blunders.

To be clear, in a vacuum, at least, this particular loss wasn’t immediately owing to Trump. As Andrew Egger — notably, a journalist for the anti-Trump Dispatch — pointed out: “The flip side to this take is ‘Trump’s fault,’ but it wasn’t even that! Trump did the best thing he could do for Herschel during the runoff, which was honor his request to stay out of state and not get publicly snippy with him over it.” At the same time, Trump’s fingerprints are on this loss insofar as he’s responsible for Herschel Walker’s getting in the race in the first place: As Ryan Girdusky — notably, a MAGA/populist-friendly political strategist — pointed out: “Only one Republican [Trump] called him [Walker] multiple times and begged him to run. Only one Republican endorsed him before he ran.” 

But the buck stops, ultimately, with the fact that Herschel Walker was a bad candidate. He was a bad candidate! Just admit it. The man lost a race in a state where other Republicans ran the table during the same election cycle, carrying every other statewide race just a month earlier. Obviously, there are multiple causes of any election loss, and reducing any outcome to one singular factor is silly. But the same goes for any other factor, including throwing this at the feet of national Republican leadership. That’s particularly true in a race like this one, where that establishment went all-in on Walker. I have any number of criticisms of GOP leadership, but how the hell is this their fault? The efforts to blame them never specify. 

This stuff matters. A 51–49 Senate Democratic majority has the power to start packing the federal judiciary, in a way that a 50–50 split couldn’t, even with Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote. As Daniel McCarthy wrote in the New York Post in the run-up to the race:

Walker’s election is critical because Republican numbers in the Senate will determine whether President Joe Biden can pack the federal judiciary. If Walker wins Georgia’s Dec. 6 runoff, the Senate remains 50-50. Democrats would just barely retain control, thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote.

But their ambitions would be checked by the need to work with Republicans on keeping the chamber operating without a regular majority. Biden’s judicial nominees would remain under close scrutiny, and the president will have little chance to appoint judges who are tougher on cops and crime victims than they are on perpetrators of violence.

With a 51-seat Senate majority, on the other hand, Democrats would be unchecked, and Biden would have more power to reshape the federal bench than he’s had these first two years in office. The Democratic Party’s radical left still wouldn’t get everything on its wish list — but it would get more than it can now, and the consequences for the justice system would be dreadful.

But until Republicans are willing to see what’s clearly hanging right in front of their face — until they stop making excuses for their own unforced errors — they’ll continue to lose. And frankly, they’ll deserve to.