The Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway said that while the Republicans poured time, money, and other resources into strategic campaigning for the Georgia Senate runoff election, the results prove that it’s necessary for the GOP to have “inspiring candidates.”
“You could have these consultant-led campaigns with a lot of money, but there’s simply no substitute to having candidates who people are excited to get out and vote for,” Hemingway said on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” “I think that was lacking here.”
“I think the Republican party needs to focus more on quality candidates and good policy ideas and less on spending a lot of money on ads or consultant-focused races," @MZHemingway pic.twitter.com/78R66AXbZR
— The Federalist (@FDRLST) January 6, 2021
Another issue for Republicans in this election, Hemingway said, was incorrectly projected voter turnout.
“I think it’s interesting that the Republican establishment really felt that they were going to win this, and they kept pointing to their voter turnout efforts,” Hemingway said, noting that a similar pattern emerged in the 2012 election when now-Sen. Mitt Romney was the GOP presidential candidate. “I don’t know if you remember that, where they said our voter turnout will be great and it turned out not to be so great,” she continued.
While many people are looking for someone to blame for the low Republican turnout and the potential loss of both incumbent seats, Hemingway said the GOP should focus its efforts on choosing “quality candidates” with “good policy ideas.”
“I think that when you have a loss like this, you can point fingers in a number of directions and people are going to do that where they’re blaming each other. Failure has 1,000 fathers,” Hemingway said. “The Republican party needs to focus more on quality candidates and good policy ideas and less on spending a lot of money on ads or consultant-focused races.”
Hemingway also noted that GOP voters are frustrated with the “sloppiness” of the recent election, as well as with the corporate media and big tech’s efforts to interfere to accomplish a political agenda, which needs to be addressed.
“People have serious concerns,” Hemingway said. “I’m surprised how large the number of Republican objectors you have in the House and Senate,” she continued. “That really speaks to how this is a major issue. Republican voters know if they cannot clean up voting systems, people have an asterisk next to elections. That is a serious threat to the republic.”
