Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Trump nemesis Kemp is running over Trump-endorsed Perdue

News reports regularly say Republicans are running on Trump’s “big lie.” But that suggests they are merely re-litigating his loss out of twisted loyalty to him. It’s worse: Some candidates are running on an implicit vow to do what it takes to subvert future losses.

[David] Perdue is a prime example. He has said that as governor he wouldn’t have certified Trump’s 2020 loss. That’s an implicit promise to use his power as governor in a way Kemp would not, to prevent a legitimate GOP loss from becoming official.

[...]

Analysts are already describing this as evidence of Trump’s waning influence among GOP voters. But something bigger is at stake: A decisive Kemp win would show that Republican officials can abide by the integrity of election losses and live to tell the tale — that is, without immediately seeing their careers implode in the next GOP primary.

Perdue has built his entire primary challenge to Kemp around the idea that in some vague sense, Kemp betrayed Republican voters by rebuffing Trump’s pressure to help steal the 2020 election. Trump endorsed Perdue for the explicit purpose of ousting Kemp as payback for that heresy.

[...]

Perdue recently telegraphed this again. At a GOP primary debate this week, Perdue flatly declared that Kemp had “caved and allowed radical Democrats to steal our election,” and told GOP voters that if they’re upset and angry about Democratic control, Kemp is to blame for it.

[...]

Perdue is wagering that GOP voters’ angst over losing in 2020 will make them ripe marks.

  WaPo
Looks like that may be a spectacularly bad bet.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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