#KellyCantLead: Republican attacks on 'looting Kelly Loeffler' come back to haunt the Georgia GOP

Mad Matt Gaetz is on the campaign trail in Georgia, but not exactly in the manner he would like. A video of Gaetz attacking Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler on behalf of then-Rep. Doug Collins was helping the hashtag #KellyCantLead go viral on Twitter Wednesday night.

Collins had challenged Loeffler in the so-called jungle special election for senator November 3 but came in a distant third to the Reverend Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, as well as Loeffler, who beat him by almost 300,000 votes. Their contest had been bitter on the Republican side, with far-right Florida congressman Gaetz campaigning hard for Collins, his fellow wingnut with whom he became famous as attack dogs for Donald Trump during impeachment proceedings.

Now, Gaetz is campaigning the hard way. He was a little loose with his words on behalf of Collins and as happens in nasty primaries, such words don’t always go away easily. Democrats are now gleefully circulating a killer video produced by MeidasTouch.com using Gaetz’s attack on Loeffler to help Warnock try to unseat her in one of Georgia’s two critical Senate races.

“I’ve never told this story before,” Gaetz tells his Georgia GOP audience. “but this is what the Loeffler team went to the Trump team with: They said you’ve got to get Doug Collins out this race. You don’t want the people of Georgia making this decision. You don’t want the true heart and soul, the patriots in our movement to make this call, you want Kelly Loeffler. And this is why. Because she said I have $50 million for this project and I can either spend my $50 million getting new voters and helping the Trump campaign or I can spend that $50 million taking out Doug Collins. That’s literally what they said to us. What does that tell you? The truth is with Kelly Loeffler, her own ambitions and her own elite friends come first. And the president, the rest of us come second. We deserve a senator who will put our president, our values and the good people of Georgia first.”

The ad concludes: “One thing we can all agree on: Georgia deserves better than looting Kelly Loeffler.”

You can watch the video here:

It doesn’t take a dive into ancient Georgia political history to understand the background here. In August 2019, Senator Johnny Isakson shocked the political world with the announcement he would retire at the end of 2019 for health reasons. Isakson had revealed a diagnosis with Parkinson’s Disease in 2015. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp found out shortly before the public.

The resignation gave way to what in retrospect was an excellent political comedy. Kemp, who everyone now knows is weird, turned out to be independently weird. He did something pretty much unheard of: He posted the U.S. Senate seat vacancy online. As one digital strategist asked the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “I mean who puts up a job opening for U.S. senator? Well, Kemp.

There was already a mad scramble among some big names in Georgia politics, but Kemp had signaled this wasn’t going to be your father’s Senate appointment. Eventually, Collins would emerge as the frontrunner, but Kemp was said to be irritated that Collins was pressuring a bit from outside sources, one of whom was named Trump.

For obvious reasons, Collins was seen a major ally of Trump and the president made no secret publicly on Twitter--and in direct private conversations between the two men-- of his insistence that Kemp choose Collins. Trump alter ego Sean Hannity of Fox News repeatedly referred to him as “Senator Collins” before his mammoth audience.

“I’d like the governor to appoint you because you have turned into a rock star--a Republican with a backbone,” Hannity slobbered over Collins on his show. “You went out there and you released transcripts that no other Congressman would release. That is the type of leadership we need in the Senate.”

Couple that sendoff with the fact that Trump had given Kemp vital support the previous year in his own race for governor, and in a normal world, tapping Collins would be an obvious choice. But as the nation noticed during the COVID-19 crisis, Kemp doesn’t live in a normal world. So, defying pretty much all odds, Kemp essentially told Trump and his conservative followers to take a hike and chose Loeffler, the outsider business titan best known as co-owner of the Atlanta Dream WNBA franchise.

Collins would then challenge Loeffler. Gaetz would then help Collins attack Loeffler. Loeffler would then beat Collins. And the Democrats would enjoy airing Gaetz’s words against Loeffler against Loeffler again. This time to help Warnock.

On the bright side for Gaetz , there’s nothing like name ID for a politician. By late Wednesday, the hashtag #KellyCantLead had more than 30,000 tweets.