Is Karl Rove Dooming Georgia GOP Senators Perdue and Loeffler to Defeat?

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Dec 14, 2020

Republican consultant and strategist Karl Rove, whose heyday was during the George W. Bush administration as the president’s senior advisor and deputy chief of staff, is leading the charge for the GOP in the Georgia Senate runoff. But questions have arisen about whether he is the man to do it.

Appearing on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with host Maria Bartiromo, Senator David Perdue’s major talking point about why it’s important to maintain the Senate’s Republican majority is that it will prevent the country from backsliding into Barack Obama’s economy—with the radical social and political nature of the Democratic Party platform receiving only a scant mention.

“If we keep the majority, we not only hold the line against the Democratic agenda, but we also protect the gains that we made under President Trump over the last four years that allowed 6.5 million people to be pulled out of poverty. We don’t want to go back to the economic dark side of the Obama and Biden administration that produced the lowest economic output in US history,” Perdue said.

This is reminiscent of Perdue’s previous justification on a private Zoom call that keeping the GOP majority would enable Mitch McConnell to “make deals” with Joe Biden.

Ann Coulter blasted the appearance Sunday evening, tweeting: “Dems want mass amnesty, DC statehood, court-packing, defunding the police and taking our guns. What does [Karl] Rove’s candidate talk about? THE ECONOMY”:

Rove is playing a major role in the continued candidacies of Senators Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. He is the national finance chair of the Georgia Battleground Fund, which is a joint fundraising committee with the senators’ campaigns and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He has also gone to bat for them numerous times in print and on television. On December 2 he published a piece in the Wall Street Journal saying that Perdue and Loeffler are “the last line of defense for conservatives.”

Despite his total commitment to the two Georgia senators, Rove has tried to push Donald Trump into accepting the results of the presidential election over the past month. Appearing on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Rove essentially called Trump a sore loser.

“If his goal is to lay the predicate to come back in 2024 and run again, he’s helping himself at least gain the nomination. But I think in the long run he’s not helping himself or the country,” Rove said. “America likes comebacks, but they don’t like sore losers and he is on the edge of looking like a sore loser, and probably will look like it after January 6.”

On November 11, barely a week after Election Day, Karl Rove wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing that Donald Trump should give up the fight and “unite the country by leading a peaceful transition and letting grievances go.”

There is an ongoing battle within the conservative political sphere over the Georgia Senate runoff. Some, like Rove, are strongly pushing Georgia to get out and vote for Perdue and Loeffler as if their lives depended on it. Others argue that establishment Republicans who’ve abandoned Trump in his fight for the White House do not deserve an unquestioning vote, especially with the way things have gone in the state of Georgia itself. Even Trump has repeatedly attacked Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for their handling of the election, tweeting that Perdue and Loeffler might not win if Kemp and Raffensperger don’t get it together:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1338347204440952832

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1338348880182829061

Perdue and Loeffler would increase their chances of winning if they hammered the presidential election as a ruling class coup, actively fought for President Trump, and painted a more detailed, articulate picture of what their opponents would help do to weaken and destroy this nation. Broad accusations of them being “radical left” and “socialists” will have little effect if they do not specifically portray them as integral parts of an effort to jam through a pro-amnesty, pro-censorship, pro-COVID lockdown, pro-court packing, and pro-defund the police agenda.

If Perdue and Loeffler lose in January, Republicans will have no one to blame but themselves.

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