The devil went down to Georgia. He was lookin' for a soul to steal.
He was in a bind 'cause he was way behind, he was willing to make a deal.
- Charlie Daniels
Thus Donald Trump's demonization of Georgia's entire voting system with his insistence that the Peach State's elections are rife with fraud now has conspiratorial MAGA types calling for a boycott of the two Senate runoff races, slated for Jan. 5.
Yes, you read correctly. Trump supporters are calling for Republican voters to boycott the election. Stay home. Don't vote. It's head-shaking stupidity. And it has Republicans so worried that Donald Trump Jr. is firing up a new political action committee and scrambling with ads and tweets to quiet the din and try to salvage the seats of incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue:
"I'm seeing a lot of talk from people that are supposed to be on our side telling GOP voters not to go out & vote for @KLoeffler and @Perduesenate. That is NONSENSE. IGNORE those people," Trump Jr. tweeted Monday.
But another tweeter wasn't having it and responded: "We're telling everyone to write in Donald J Trump!"
Surely Democrats are grinning and rubbing their hands together.
Trump and Republicans seem to be reaping what they have sown. They cried voter fraud so long and loud that some of those 80% of Republicans who now believe it are stirring their own crazy conspiracy talk and planning punishing attacks - like election boycotts that may shave off just enough MAGA voters to hand a tight race to the Democratic challengers, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
But before we Democrats go dancing in the streets, we need but one sobering look at the face of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to remind us of the seriousness of these two Senate runoff elections.
Ossoff, who seeks to unseat Perdue, and Warnock, who hopes to do the same to Loeffler, are running on a simple, no-nonsense message.
If Republicans win one or both runoffs, continued GOP control of the Senate will mean that McConnell will orchestrate the same kind of relentless obstruction of President-elect Joe Biden's agenda that he used against Barack Obama during the last Democratic presidency.
That would mean an even more grueling economic recovery, a less-coordinated response to COVID-19 and probably put the nails in the coffin for popular policies like expanded health care and infrastructure and jobs investments - all things that won overwhelming support from Democratic and Republican voters in pre-election polling.
But now, with McConnell and other Republican politicians already smelling another Republican-controlled Senate (or at least they were until the Q-Anon revolt began), they are, in the words of Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, "getting back to our DNA" of spending cuts, entitlement reform and deficit concerns.
You know - the deficit they and Trump ran up when it suited their purpose. Now with a Democratic president, the deficit is again, in their view, the devil - especially if they can use it to create misery for Joe Biden and a Democratic administration.
That's what makes Georgia's two Senate runoffs so vitally important. And that's what Ossoff and Warnock have to keep driving home to Georgia voters.
It's not what the Republicans say. It's what they do. It's that they are, again and again, willing to sabotage the country to gain political advantage from the destruction they cause. The giant tax cut for the rich. The growing number of Americans with no health insurance. The pandemic-strapped economy with no stimulus aid in sight. The deep Republican distrust of elections thanks to Trump crying "wolf" for months.
Trump has convinced his supporters that Georgia's two incumbent GOP candidates, Loeffler and Perdue, are not sufficiently pro-Trump. They may somehow be complicit in Georgia's electoral fraud, goes the Trumpite thinking. Never mind that both of them called for their fellow Republican in charge of the state's elections to resign. That wasn't good enough, so hashtags like #CrookedPerdue and #CrookedKelly are flying around. Politico writes that the two lawmakers' Parler accounts "are brimming with posts accusing them of being secret 'liberal DemoRats.' "
And it isn't just QAnon believers leading this chorus. Sidney Powell, the wingnut who was briefly a lead attorney in Trump's push to overturn the election, has chimed in, too.
But Democrats can't just rely on the hope that conspiracy theories will hoist the GOP on its own petard. Nor can they say about McConnell and the GOP that they wish Americans would understand how destructive they can be. No. This time the Democrats have to make Americans - especially Georgians - understand.
Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman put this best, saying that when Republicans start talking about deficits, don't just deride their "hypocrisy."
Instead ask them: "Why are you trying to undermine the economy? Why don't you want people to have jobs? How many Americans' livelihoods are you willing to destroy just to knock down Biden's approval ratings a few points? Is this what you were elected to do? How dare you?"
Give the devil his due, as the late Charlie Daniels sang.
Sure, we say more power to those MAGA election boycotters. But Democrats: Don't be quiet, and don't stay home.
This isn't just about Georgia. It's about America. It's about sending the devil Mitch McConnell and his GOP hucksters packing.