The Problem with Loeffler I:
SALE: Senate Seat, Hardly Used
There is really only one quality I think is important in a United States Senator, which is, for better or worse, they must represent their constituents. It doesn’t matter if their constituents back policies I think are stupid, or laws I think should be changed, if a senator is representing what his people want, than he’s ok in my book. It’s a really low bar, and honestly, if you don’t reach it, then you probably shouldn’t be a senator, and that, in a nutshell, is why I despise Kelly Loeffler. Everything about her tenure, from her appointment to her time in the Senate, is slandered in opportunism and greed, and her actions in the past few weeks have made her go from shady to outright corrupt. She absolutely represents no one in our state except for herself and her banker, and I think if she had a shred of dignity left she would be using it to resign. Now, I don’t believe it’s fair for a person to be considered guilty before the facts are laid out, so let's go to the beginning. With long time, respected senator Johnny Isakson retiring in 2020 due to health issues, Governor Brian Kemp (who I have a lot of thoughts on, but that’s another story), decided the best way to have a fair and open process, after all those fraud and cheating accusations in the 2018 gubernatorial election, would be an online form where aspiring applicants would explain why they wanted to be senator and submit some paperwork. Barring the fact that the Governor of Georgia was attempting to fill a SENATE SEAT in the same way I applied for a job on Indeed, it actually worked pretty well at first. There was news of some respected people like Doug Collins (Pre Impeachment hearings), Jan Jones, or Tom Price, who, while I disagree with the great majority of their policies, actually can claim to have represented before, so I could’ve lived with their appointment. Apparently Kemp couldn’t though. See, he thought back to the 2018 Gubernatorial, when Cobb county flipped to the Democrats for the first time in a governor's race since 1986, and thought the only way to raise his numbers in the suburbs would be through appointing a somewhat moderate woman or a minority. The problem is, none of those groups applied, and the spots were instead filled by raving, nutty, archconservatives that would make the suburbanites run away from him as fast as they ran away from the Atlanta Public School system. So, with the timer on his publicity stunt of an application running down, he panicked, and over the recommendation of the President who had saved his ass, picked Kelly Loeffler, who on the surface appeared to be the bland antidote to all his problems. She was relatively fresh in Georgia, only having lived in our state for 10 years, was a financial executive and business woman married to the head of the NYSE, and somewhat politically moderate. It probably didn’t hurt that she had donated 100,000 dollars to Kemp’s campaign and could pump 20 million dollars of her own money into the special election so the GOP didn’t have to worry about fundraising, but whatever, she was the answer to his prayers. So he called her up, and she submitted her application three hours before the deadline, saving Kemp from having to appoint the Trump backed Doug Collins, saving re-election and cementing him as the greatest governor in Georgia history. Or, at least, that’s probably what he thought would happen.
Instead, everyone let out a collective, “what the fuck?” The Democrats were just more confused than anything, but the Republicans, oooh boy. Shaun Hannity began a coordinated destruction campaign on Fox News while lavishing praise on the way more conservative Doug Collins, and anti-abortation groups threw a hissy fit on twitter as they didn’t consider Loeffler sufficiently pro life, to the point where Life News tweeted, “You bretrayed pro-life Republicans” at Kemp. That was probably when Loeffler, knowing she was on very thin ice regarding her special election in terms of conservative support, decided the present herself to the state she had barely lived in and the nation at one of the most consequential points of the Trump presidency by overreacting and swinging so hard to the right it makes Jeff Sessions look like Sanders. Instead of calmly explaining her political positions in a succinct and informative way, she decided “screw it, let;s just see how far I can go”, and announced her rabid support for policies such as a literal wall on the Mexican border and an unwavering loyalty to Trump (because if you want to win back the voters who were against Trump, it’s best to identify yourself with not only the man but his most ridiculous policy, right?) Anyway, after that hullabaloo and Collin’s pouting with his threats of making a run for the seat anyway, things went on as normal, with a few exceptions. She did start using that 20 million dollars she had squirreled away to run ads lying about how rural and country she is (because again, she’s not from Georgia) like 24/7 which was pretty annoying, but besides that, nothing too out of the ordinary. She stayed in DC, getting the lay of the land, and getting prepared for what many expected to be a relatively easy campaign. Or, at least that was until the two ton electoral shithammer called the Warnock and Collins Show.
Almost back to back, Loeffler went from near-assured re-election to Walter Mondale 1984 with the entrance of Doug Collins running to her right and a strong Democratic opponent in Ralph Warnock, who both entered the race raining attacks on her from the sky. Collins, a far right Trump acayalte who became famous from his diehard defense of the president during the impeachment trials, and Warnock, who went from the projects of Savannah to being the head of MLK’s former church, couldn’t be any different on paper. They share wildly different policy positions, campaign styles, and every other normal metric, but they do have one common seed in their main argument against Loeffler: She doesn’t represent Georgia. Collins believes she is not conservative enough for the state while Warnock believes the opposite, but the fact that both of her opponents are running on her not actually representing Georgia is pretty telling about her career. The only reason she sits in that seat right now is because she has 20 million dollars to burn in a political vanity contest. She has no connection to the state except for investments, no roots to lean back on, no base to speak for. She is the walking, living definition of money in politics and has no right speaking for people she’s only known for a few years because of her deep pockets. For all intents and purposes, we are missing a senator right now because the one sitting in the chair doesn’t actually know what our state is about. Georgia is a land of perseverance, of opportunity, of family and connection. We’re the place where everyone smiles and wishes you a good day, where no one honks on the highway, where Waffle House is considered a 5 star meal. We are a good and hopeful people, and we deserve much better from our so-called leaders. We deserve an actual Georgian representing us in the senate, and hopefully come November, we’ll finally have one.
- James Earl Miller
- Sources:
- James Earl Miller
- Sources:
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