by Richard Schulman
With former US President Donald Trump having sabotaged his own party’s control of the Senate in the Georgia runoffs, Democrats are hoping the Republican Party will split into pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions. The presidency, Congress, and the administrative agencies have all fallen under their Democratic control. Democrats will now exercise far-reaching powers over media, credit, energy, future elections, and the English language.
It should never have come to this. Let’s briefly review the events that led to the present situation.
National election day, November 3rd
Republicans went to bed with President Trump in the lead and found out a few days later that the numbers had reversed. Irregularities were reported in cities with strong Democratic Party machines; less secure voting by mail had been widespread because of the pandemic; judges changed rules controversially at the last minute; Democrats opposed cleaning up voter lists prior to the elections; and a litany of other concerns. Under these circumstances, it was natural and perfectly legal for President Trump’s campaign to launch challenges. All but one failed in court, before Republican and Democratic judges alike. The one that didn’t fail, in Pennsylvania, did not involve enough votes to have affected the result. At that point, Trump should have conceded.
Republican candidates for Congress, on the other hand, did unexpectedly well, outpolling the president – and sometimes their Democratic opponents — in jurisdiction after jurisdiction. The numbers made it perfectly clear that many voters liked Republican policies more than they did the party’s president.
Biden didn’t win by a landslide, but he did win. Trump’s self-centered press conferences during the pandemic seem to have been the last straw for many independent voters and not a few Republicans.
The January 5th Georgia runoffs
Ordinarily, Georgia Republican David Perdue would have been re-elected to the Senate. In the November primary, he had a comfortable lead over his Democratic opponent, Jon Ossoff. Perdue had 49.7% of the vote, Ossoff 47.95%, with the remaining 2.32% going to the Libertarian Party candidate. In the January runoff, most of the Libertarian vote was expected to go to Purdue. Republican Kelly Loeffler had a less certain race against Raphael Warnock, but in Georgia a good Republican turnout usually puts the party’s candidate over the top. Warnock was also dogged with accusations of anti-Semitism and anti-white racism.
President Trump deliberately sabotaged the election of the two Republican Senators, betraying his party by giving the Democrats control of the Senate and thus Congress as well as the presidency. Trump did this by repeatedly denouncing Georgia’s Republican governor and Secretary of State for not breaking the law on his behalf, by undercutting the Republican Senate by calling for Nancy Pelosi’s $2,000 relief payment rather than the Senate’s hard-fought-for $600, and then vetoing the defense budget, which meant much in Georgia with its multiple bases. Trump told Georgia voters not to bother going to the polls, that it was all a fraud – and many Georgia Republicans, disoriented by him, didn’t. This was all to punish elected Republican officials, including even his own vice-president, who rightly followed the Constitution and the law rather than a narcissistic President who couldn’t stand the idea that Republican legislators had won but he hadn’t.
January 6 Capitol riots
Instead of doing penance for the disastrous effect he had on the Georgia runoffs, Trump urged on his supporters to “Stop the Steal.” Tens of thousands came to Washington to peacefully demonstrate, but his aggressive words were taken, as he should have known they would be, as a go-ahead to his QAnon and Proud Boy supporters to assault the Capitol. The results were predictably tragic and provided the pretext for launching a post-Reichstag-fire type assault by Democrats on conservative publications and politicians.
During the Obama administration, Nancy Pelosi was a wonderful organizing tool for Republicans. Since 2016, Trump has played that roll for Mrs. Pelosi and the Democrats. He’s been their fund-raising and vote-getting gift that keeps on giving. That’s why she wants us to go through another impeachment circus even though Trump will no longer be in office. A censorship motion would have been more appropriate and probably voted up quickly by both houses. But Pelosi prefers the circus, and meanwhile her media, corporate, and banking supporters are shutting down as much of the Republican opposition as they can. Even Angela Merkel, no friend of Trump’s, is shocked.
For four years the left mendaciously accused Trump of plotting a coup. Once his behavior, in his final weeks, gave substance to that accusation, it became instead the left, by shutting down opposition voices on Twitter and Facebook and an entire publication in the case of Parler, that used powerful corporate allies to conduct its own authoritarian coup.
But Democrats have a historical problem that they repeat again and again, that of overreaching. If Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and independents work together on a well-thought-out program for prosperity and national security, Democrats will find themselves out in the cold again and the country back on a limited-government, fiscally-responsible growth track.
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