Trump Wrecking GOP Hopes In Swing State Georgia

The Democrats have several big tasks in Georgia in 2022. The top two would be reelecting Raphael Warnock to the Senate and electing Stacey Abrams governor. Trumpian chaos is making it harder for Georgia Republicans to derail the Democratic plans. In last year's special election, Trump's aggressive support for Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler, hurt her in the runoff and Warnock stunned the political establishment, beating her 2,289,113 (51.04%) to 2,195,841 (48.96%). He did better than either Biden (49.47) or Ossoff (50.61%) in their races.

Because of Trump's insistence that an old friend of his, Texas football player Herschel Walker, be the nominee, the GOP primary is a chaotic mess. A couple of vanity candidates and state Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black have declared but 3 more serious potential contenders-- including Loeffler-- have held off. The other two eager to run, if Walker doesn't, are congressmen Drew Ferguson and Buddy Carter, who are afraid to run against a Trump-backed candidate (which would mean being labeled a RINO). Carter, in fact, has already endorsed Walker himself!

And as if that isn't chaotic enough for Señor Trumpnzee, he's commissioned a poll of likely GOP primary voters from Fabrizio to further his own ends: revenge against Brian Kemp for not helping him steal the presidential election. The Trumpist polling memo is hilarious and sounds as though Trump wrote it himself. Fabrizio begins with a sentence geared right to Trumpanzee: "We found that Brian Kemp is a weak incumbent that could be very susceptible to a strong primary challenge, Herschel Walker could run away with the Senate nomination, and that an endorsement from President Trump would propel David Perdue into a lead over Kemp and virtually guarantee Walker a win." The first breakdown: "Near Universal Approval of President Trump, Kemp Pales In Comparison." Fabrizio sure knows how to keep the cash flowing in his direction: "More than 90% of Georgia Republican Primary Voters approve of Trump, including 74% who strongly approve of him. The former President remains the 800-pound gorilla in Georgia GOP politics. Comparatively, Gov. Kemp’s approval rating is anemic. While his approval rating is positive, more than a quarter of his own party’s primary voters disapprove of his job performance. Furthermore, of the 69% who approve of him, only 24% strongly approve (compared to 74% for Trump), indicating a very soft positive that can be more easily shifted."

Not enough to stoke the Orange Blob's ego? The next headline is "Despite Being the Incumbent, Kemp Can't even Capture Half the Electorate In Gov. Primary." This is the Trumpiest polling memo I've ever seen and it minimizes and rationalizes Kemp's clear lead.

Fabrizio/Trump make sure everyone knows that if Señor T gets "fully" behind David Perdue, who isn't running, he would beat Kemp. [Side show in the Trumpanzee circus: 3 Trumpist stooges-- Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani and Bernie Kerik-- plus washed up, very racist country singer Travis Tritt have all endorsed Vernon Jones.]

And as a topping on Señor Trumpanzee's nice little cupcake, Fabrizio throws in that a Trump endorsement in the Senate race will guarantee that Herschel Walker will win without a runoff.

Reporting on the poll for Politico this morning, Alex Isenstadt wrote that Señor T "has been fixated on Kemp, whom he has accused of doing too little to intervene in Georgia’s vote count following a 2020 election that saw President Joe Biden win the state by two-tenths of a percentage point, or 11,779 votes. In a statement issued earlier this month, Trump celebrated Kemp getting 'booed off the stage' at a Georgia GOP function. 'It is amazing how the people get what happened in Georgia, and elsewhere! The election was rigged, and everybody knows it,' Trump added, saying that Kemp 'did absolutely nothing.'"

This is exactly the kind of chaos that will help Abrams win the election. In 2018 Kemp-- then Secretary of State and widely believed to have rigged the election in his own favor-- managed to beat Abrams 1,978,408 (50.2%) to 1,923,685 (48.8%). That's less than 55,000 votes out of almost 4 million cast, even with Kemp breaking the law by using voter suppression tactics and by rejecting absentee ballots in Gwinnett County. Georgia has trended bluer since then, giving Abrams a good shot to win a rematch even without the acrimony and chaos Trump is engendering.