President Donald J. Trump gave his farewell address on Tuesday evening.
I can't help but think that if Trump had conveyed even a semblance of this graciousness and humility beginning the Saturday after Election Day (when Joe Biden was officially projected the winner of the presidential election), the Republicans would have moved forward with tremendous optimism after over-performing in U.S. House races and not losing a single governor's office or state legislature. Also, the focus would have been shifted 100% on winning the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia, with GOP Sens. Perdue and Loeffler likely prevailing and keeping the party in a comfortable majority.
Instead, for two solid months since Election Day, Trump inflamed his most ardent supporters with baseless allegations* of rampant fraud as well as denigrated elected officials in the state of Georgia for not overturning his loss to Biden in that state. As a result, the GOP brand (for now) is even more toxic than before Trump was elected and there were seeds of doubt planted in the minds of Georgia Republicans that just enough stayed home two weeks ago, resulting in the loss of the Senate majority.
As a result, Trump's undeniably positive accomplishments take a back seat to what has transpired over the past 11 weeks. Sadly for him, he doesn't appear to have the ability to be introspective, thus the consequences of the scorched earth strategy he implemented will not be apparent to him. Sad.
*To be clear: I'm not saying there was zero election fraud. What I am saying is there is no evidence to suggest it was on a scale that swung the contest from Trump to Biden.
---------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment