New GOP ad aims at a Georgia Democrat — and hits Trump

A new GOP ad suggests that crime and the economy have gotten so bad under Republican control that no one can sleep at night.

The ad, posted this week by the National Republic Senatorial Committee, aims to scare Georgia voters into reelecting Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in upcoming January runoffs.

“How does anyone sleep? Job worries. Bills. Violence” a narrator asks in the 30-second attack against the incumbents’ Democratic opponents.

“Now Raphael Warnock undermines the police and wants cashless bail. Really? A get-out-of-jail-free card for violent criminals. And Jon Ossoff praises AOC’s radical Green New Deal,” the spot dishonestly claims. “That’s a $10,000 bill for every Georgia family every year. There goes the college fund! Ossoff and Warnock in the Senate — we’ll never sleep again.”

It is unusual that the ad focuses on violent crime and the declining economy, given that for the last four years both the Senate and White House have been under Republican control. The party committee working to “Save Trump’s Majority!” in the Senate is suggesting Americans are terrified of what has happened on their watch.

After years of declining violent crime rates and economic expansion, many American cities saw an uptick in violence in 2020 and millions of Americans lost their jobs amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump, Loeffler, Perdue, and the Senate Republican majority have refused to act on bills to curb gun violence and to provide trillions in economic relief.

The specific attacks against Warnock and Ossoff have been debunked by fact-checkers in the past. Warnock is not anti-police and does not support abolishing cash bail for violent criminals, though he does support reforming the system for nonviolent crimes). And Ossoff does not support Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal proposal, though he does back clean energy investment.

Prior to the November elections, Trump also made the unusual decision to run highlighting worsening violent crime during his time in office after declaring in January 2017 that the “American carnage” in American cities would immediately end. His 2020 reelection campaign presented urban areas as violent wastelands descending into total “anarchy.”

The strategy did not work. Trump lost the Electoral College by what he once described as a “landslide” and lost the popular vote by more than 7 million votes.

The Loeffler-Warnock and Perdue-Ossoff runoff elections will be held on Jan. 5. If Democrats win both seats, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would be able to break a tie and give them a majority in the Senate starting on Inauguration Day.

Both races are expected to be close in a state that President-elect Joe Biden won by about 12,000 votes last month.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.