With Luck Trump Will Destroy the GOP As He Goes Out the Door

As of now, Donald Trump has failed to sign the Covid-19 relief bill passed by Congress and millions of Americans face the loss of benefits and the moratorium on evictions.  Trump may yet allow the federal government go into shutdown as he fumes over the reality that a majority of Americans despise him and voted to elect Joe Biden. But it is not just working Americans who are being hit with the consequences of Trump's petulant and self-absorbed  hissy fit.  Deliciously, the Republican Party is being buffeted in a much deserved manner after years of self-prostitution to Trump and the jettisoning of  any claim of moral decency.  With luck, Trump will sabotage the GOP candidates in the Georgia runoff elections on January 5, 2021, and hand Senate control to the Democrats.  It would be a fitting result for a party which embraced depravity and utterly foul individual.  A piece at CNN looks at what hopefully will befall the GOP.  Here are highlights:

This holiday season, President Donald Trump has wreaked havoc on Congress, our democracy and our judicial system by pardoning political associates and convicted murderers. But Trump has saved a special kind of Grinch-like behavior for the two Republican Senate candidates in Georgia who are headed for runoff elections in January and for Senator Mitch McConnell, whose fate as majority leader depends on the GOP winning at least one of those races.

These three are only the latest to realize that the return on investment for loyalty to Donald Trump is exactly zero. McConnell, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler all stood on the Senate floor in February and acquitted Trump on charges he abused his power in office and obstructed Congress. But now that it's time for Trump to return the favor, our self-absorbed [Trump] President seems to be doing everything he can to make it harder for all three -- and perhaps giving the Democrats the gift of control of the Senate as he leaves office. 

Trump's political messages started hurting the Republican senators in Georgia long before this Christmas season. Trump railed against early voting throughout the campaign to sow doubt about the election results and set the predicate for the outrageous claims of voter fraud and attempts to nullify the November election. 

Early voting, traditionally a strong suit for Republicans, provided Biden with the margins he needed around the country.  . . . The combination of massive early voting by Democrats and lower numbers on the GOP side made the January 5 runoffs possible. 

Trump's reaction to the election results has also hit Perdue and Loeffler hard. His bitter criticism of Georgia's Republican governor and secretary of state for not helping him overturn the results has split the Republican Party in the state. Setting off a circular firing squad within the Republican Party was an unexpected gift for the Democrats. 

Making it worse for the state Republican Party, lawyers who are supportive of Trump, led by Lin Wood, have cast doubt on Georgia being able to conduct a fair election. They've told Trump supporters to stay home and not vote in the January runoff. Clearly, in such a close race, neither side can afford any significant boycott on voting. 

After McConnell finally acknowledged that Joe Biden was President-elect following the Electoral College vote, Trump had an aide send a memo to Republicans in Congress trashing the majority leader. It suggested that the reason McConnell won his re-election contest by nearly 20 points was because of the President's endorsement and that the majority leader wasn't sufficiently grateful. 

Trump may have saved his biggest gift to the Democrats with his Christmas week torpedo launched at Congress. House and Senate leaders spent months painfully negotiating a Covid-19 relief bill providing desperately needed aid to millions of Americans suffering through the pandemic. 

Perdue and Loeffler now have to defend why they voted for the small payment, which [Trump] the President now opposes. Voters are not likely to focus on the President being completely absent from the relief negotiations and only speaking out after the votes were cast. 

Time and again we have learned with [Trump] the President that it is only about Trump. And the parting gift of Trumpism, as Joe Biden is sworn in, may well be a Senate controlled by the Democrats.