Self-described '100% pro-Trump' senator ditches him after she loses election

A day after losing her election, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) suddenly abandoned her “100%” loyalty to Donald Trump.

Loeffler, who had signed onto a Republican attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, announced Wednesday night that she had changed her mind after violent pro-Trump terrorists had stormed the Capitol building and delayed the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory by several hours.

Noting that she had “fully intended” to support the efforts to overturn the election earlier in the day, she announced she instead had decided to withdraw her objections.

“I cannot now in good conscience object to the certification of these electors,” she told colleagues. “The violence, the lawlessness and siege of the halls of Congress are abhorrent and stand as a direct attack on the very institution my objection was intended to protect: the American democratic process.”

Loeffler has been among the loudest defenders of Trump’s attempts to subvert the election results after Biden won a sizeable majority of the Electoral College in November, including Loeffler’s state of Georgia.

In November, she demanded that Georgia’s Republican secretary of state resign for unspecified “failures” following Trump’s loss. Her campaign sold swag identifying Trump as “still my president.” She vowed to object to the counting of the Electoral College votes, writing on Monday, “On January 6th, I will vote to give President Trump and the American people the fair hearing they deserve and support the objection to the Electoral College certification process.”

But on Tuesday, she lost the Senate seat to which she had been temporarily appointed a year earlier. Sen.-elect Raphael Warnock (D) defeated her by tens of thousands of votes to win a seat that had not gone blue since 2000.

Loeffler built her unsuccessful campaign around her total loyalty to Trump. She ran ads bragging that her voting record was “100% pro-Trump.” She said in a debate that she had never disagreed with any of Trump’s words or actions. She abruptly flip-flopped on sending out $2,000 pandemic relief stimulus checks, openly acknowledging that she did so because Trump backed the idea.

“I’ve stood by the president 100% of the time, I’m proud to do that, and I’ve said, absolutely, we need to get relief to Americans now and I will support that,” she explained last week.

But her approach — and Trump’s endorsement — failed to win her a majority of votes in the November special election or Tuesday’s runoff. And within hours, Loeffler’s conscience no longer allowed her to stand with him.

Despite her defeat, she will continue to serve in the Senate until Georgia certifies Tuesday’s election results.

Loeffler was among just a handful of Republicans who abandoned the attempt to steal the election for Trump after Wednesday’s deadly mob attacks. Seven Republican senators and 138 GOP representatives (a majority of their caucus) voted early Thursday morning to block Biden electors from Pennsylvania from being counted.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.