Trump's attacks on GOP show he 'doesn't know how to campaign against Harris': conservative
Donald Trump knows he needs Georgia to win another term as president, but one conservative said he self-immolated in a campaign stop in Atlanta.
The Republican presidential nominee attacked the state's popular GOP Gov. Brian Kemp and other state officials for refusing to help him overturn his 2020 election loss, and The Bulwark's A.B. Stoddard said his remarks at the campaign rally and his racist misbehavior earlier in the week could doom his election chances and drag down the party with him.
"It's gratuitous to light yourself on fire twice in one week — even if you’re Donald Trump," Stoddard wrote. "But following his epic turn at the National Association of Black Journalists conference three days before, the former president had another mega-tantrum Saturday night, this time in a key swing state."
Trump's election lies cost Republicans two Senate seats in Georgia's January 2021 runoffs, and he will likely need Kemp's political network to win in November, but the state's conservatives are worried that his attacks on the governor will remind voters why they don't like the former president.
"Not long ago Trump was credited, after he cruised through a nearly effortless primary, with a new 'discipline' he hadn’t demonstrated as a candidate in 2020 or 2016," Stoddard wrote.
"Some believed that it came from his fear of incarceration — that winning is even more important to him now that he is trying to avoid being convicted in two federal criminal cases. But it turns out that Trump’s willingness to behave as a quasi-disciplined candidate resulted from confidence, not fear. He has been beating Joe Biden in general election polling — including in the battleground states — for a year."
Trump has been knocked off balance by Kamala Harris' ascension to the likely Democratic nominee, and he so far has been unable to field an effective campaign against her.
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"He doesn’t exactly know how to campaign against Harris so he’s resorting to campaigning against Republicans — it’s what he does when he’s down," Stoddard wrote.
"That’s what he was doing in January 2021 when he tanked [Kelly] Loeffler’s and [David] Perdue’s Senate bids. He spewed his Big Lie at the infamous airport hangar rally in Dalton, Georgia on January 4; the next day, the GOP lost both Senate seats. Congress convened with a Democratic Senate majority the morning of January 6. The GOP cave to Trump — in the face of that defeat and that day’s insurrection — has brought the party to where it is now."
Democrats forced President Joe Biden from their ticket because he seemed likely to lose, but Republicans have never really challenged Trump's dominance since he took control of their party.
"Republicans soothe the fragile emotions of a monstrous person while placing the entire party at risk down ballot," Stoddard wrote. "It helped them lose elections in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 — and even 2024 when Rep. Tom Suozzi won former Rep. George Santos’s old seat by campaigning on how Trump sank the immigration deal just to hurt Biden and the Democrats."
"It must be fun," she added.