by Bob Barr | Jan 11, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller As tragic as the violence at the U.S. Capitol building last week was, the loss of the two Republican Senate seats in Georgia’s Jan. 5 runoff election is by far the more politically consequential event. What makes this twin loss so gut-wrenching for the GOP is that it could have easily been avoided, if during the eight weeks between the Nov. 3 national election and the January runoff President Trump had focused on the upcoming runoff instead of trying to overturn the results of the presidential election. The immediate consequence of the losses suffered by Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler is to hand New York Democrat Chuck Schumer the keys to the senatorial kingdom. With an evenly divided Senate, this situation makes Vice President-elect Kamala Harris the de facto 101st senator and, at least for the next two years, one of the most powerful individuals in the U.S. government.Unlike vice presidents before her, whose job description once was derided by FDR’s two-term vice president, John Nance Garner, as “not worth a pail of warm spit,” Harris will hold very real, significant power whenever called on by Schumer to break a tie in Democrats’ favor. In fact, simply the threat of exercising such a vote constitutes real power that can be – and will be — employed by Schumer as well as by President Biden to implement their agenda.It did not have to turn out this way, as both Georgia Senate seats were very winnable. In order to have won them, however, the GOP and particularly President Trump needed to do one thing — turn out Republican...
by Bob Barr | Jan 7, 2021 | Townhall Article |
Townhall For all the potential merit the Trump campaign’s post-November 3rd campaign election lawsuit strategy might have possessed at the start — posing intriguing constitutional challenges and a platform for evidence of voter fraud — as a strategy to win two Georgia Senate runoff elections yesterday, it was, shall we say, problematic. Runoffs, especially in Georgia, historically and almost always, turn on three things: voter turnout, voter turnout, and voter turnout. And at this moment, with both Republicans David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler’s projected defeats, Democrats appear to have done a better job. This is a reversal of the situation prevailing for three decades in the Peach State; years in which state and local GOP workers and organizations kept their messages focused and relevant to the campaigns and to the runoff candidates. In years past, Republicans marshaled their voter databases down to the block level, and micro-organized their get-out-the-vote effort to reach voters most likely to vote in the runoff in numbers sufficient to overcome efforts of their Democrat rivals, who, until the last two cycles, were slow to adapt. That now has changed with a vengeance, presenting serious challenges for the Republican effort moving forward. Evidence of shenanigans at vote counting rooms in Democrat-controlled counties are real, and this accounts for some of the Democrat margins. And yes, the mail-in ballot verification procedure pressed by failed 2018 Democrat gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, which strangely was agreed to last Spring by Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State (not the Governor, who President Trump continues to vilify) made it far easier for illicit votes to be counted. And yes, going forward, the GOP-controlled Georgia legislature which...
by Bob Barr | Jan 4, 2021 | Daily Caller Article |
Daily Caller Successful political leaders and military commanders understand the value of focus when a strategic goal is at stake. As U.S. Army Gen. Colin Powell put it, “focus on the front windshield and not the rearview mirror.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who led his country through the dark days of World War II, said with his customary wry humor, “you will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.” In Georgia over the past two months, there have been many barking dogs.The Georgia barkers have piped up on both sides of the political aisle, pulling at Republicans David Perdue and Kelley Loeffler as they race toward their destination – reelection to the United States Senate in the double runoff.If the Republican incumbents lose on Tuesday, it will be in large measure the result of the GOP having spent too much time and energy throwing stones at barking dogs along the way.It was in fact quite clear from the outset that neither of these two GOP incumbents had secured a majority on November 3 as required by Georgia law. But, unlike the controversies surrounding vote counting for the presidential contest, which have continued to this day, the Senate runoff ball game is very different both in degree and resolution. The fact that the two elections – presidential and senatorial – have in many respects been lumped together, has spawned unnecessary and dangerous confusion in the lead up to the actual runoff election.The still-hotly contested presidential vote is subject to a number of arcane but constitutionally permitted procedural challenges available to state...
