Despite what he and his allies claim, former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, making him the first incumbent to lose reelection since George H.W. Bush.
Nevertheless, an alarming number of Republican lawmakers have embraced Trump's rhetoric—petty insults and all—in an attempt to replicate the cult of personality he built that's come to define the GOP. Many of them even backed Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election through the joint session to certify now-President Joe Biden's victory.
Now, Republicans across the country are offering a foreboding slate of proposals designed to limit the people's right to vote, especially among historically Democratic voters. The party is apparently banking on a Trump-sized turnout coupled with constraints on likely-Democratic votes in order to deliver more victories.
But Georgia's Republican Lieutenant Governor, Geoff Duncan, is warning that this strategy is untenable if Republicans want to win down the line.
Watch below.
In an interview with Chuck Todd of Meet the Press, Duncan said:
"Republicans don't need election reform to win, we need leadership. I think there's millions of Republicans waking up around the country that are realizing that Donald Trump's divisive tone and strategy is unwinnable in forward-looking elections."
He continued:
"We need real leadership, we need new focus, a GOP 2.0 that includes moderates in the middle, to get us to the next election."
The state of Georgia saw unprecedented scrutiny in the 2020 election after it went blue for the first time since 1992. It then delivered Democrats key victories in two Senate runoffs weeks later.
While the victory is credited to voting rights advocates like former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams registering and mobilizing nearly a million first time voters, Republicans falsely claimed the victory was due to baseless accusations of fraud in Fulton County.
Trump personally tried to interfere with Georgia's election results in calls to its Republican Secretary of State and the office's chief investigator. Trump himself is currently being investigated for election fraud by the Fulton County District Attorney.
Duncan's assertion was met with widespread agreement from the party's critics.
But others say the Republican party—and its determination to limit who can vote—is beyond repair.
House Democrats recently passed H.R. 1, a sweeping election reform bill, that faces an uphill climb in the Senate.
