(07-06-2021 10:06 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I personally do not believe that there is any element of politics that is squeaky clean. Politicians are humans, after all, and humans are sinners. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

With those thoughts in mind, I have pretty much lost all confidence in republicans to provide competent opposition to what I see as socialist/communist/redistributionist "progressive" democrats. Every single person knew that the Georgia runoffs were the only way to avoid absolute power in the 2021-2022 time frame. And republican candidates had won significant pluralities among the viable candidates in both first round elections. Perdue got 250,000 fewer votes in the runoff than he got first time around. Loeffler got 230,000 fewer votes in the runoff than all republicans had gotten in the primary round, and 60,000 fewer than Loeffler plus Collins had gotten the first time around. With everything on the line, democrats got their act together and republicans committed political malpractice on a massive scale.

Turnout should have been enough to get Perdue first to post, even if democrats had cheated. And successfully portraying Warnock's extreme leftist views should have been enough to drag Loeffler over the line, even though she was to many a less attractive candidate than Perdue (or Collins).

Republicans simply shot themselves in the foot, twice. First, they failed to litigate successfully against the rules changes that facilitated whatever cheating may or may not have taken place, with a full understanding of exactly what was at stake. Second, by indulging Donald Trump's ego about cheating in the November elections, they made the runoff a referendum about Trump, rather than a referendum about two flawed democrat candidates--the carpetbagger Ossoff and the radical leftist Warnock.

Now those elections are in the past, and republicans are still looking backward instead of forward. Their efforts in numerous states to tighten voter integrity laws are necessary but not sufficient, and they need to curb any tendencies to go overboard and introduce provisions that could get such laws overturned in the courts. It is time for republicans to forget 2020 (and Jan 2021) and start figuring out how to win 2022. They will benefit from the usual midterm trends against incumbents, but while that may be enough in the HOR, the senate will be a much tougher proposition. There are 20 republican seats up this time around (including several who rode in on Trump's coattails in 2016), and defending them and holding onto 50/50 will be a major proposition in itself. The only viable path I can see is to 1) make it an issues campaign, following Newt's 1994 playbook, and 2) eliminate any goofy candidates--no Sharron Angles or Christine O'Donnells.

Republicans also have the problem of how to deal with Donald Trump. Frankly, democrats could provide them an answer if one of their incessant witch hunts ever hits paydirt. If Trump were removed as a possible 2024 candidate, then republicans would be free to pursue the ideas that he advocated that brought working middle class voters to the R side of the aisle, while enabling them to bring RINO neocons back into the fold with an anybody but Trump candidate at the head of the party.

The old, "Democrats are the evil party, Republicans are the stupid party," knew no bounds with Georgia 2021, and I see the same thing continuing.

If you don't expose and identify how they cheated the first time, you can't stop it the next time. There have to be consequences.

What I don't understand is why its taking so long. Give me a crew and I would get it done in two weeks.