I spoke to Sam Brodey of the Daily Beast for a piece on post-midterm feuding among GOP senators and what it says about the Georgia run-off.
It all may seem like Beltway gossip, but the impact of the GOP’s food fight was being felt in Georgia.
Asked by The Daily Beast what the view of the pre-runoff squabbling was in the state, one Georgia-based GOP operative was ready with a quip: “Mom, Dad, can we at least finish dinner before y’all scream and yell at each other?”
Liam Donovan, a GOP lobbyist and former NRSC staffer, forecast that the fighting was “bad for morale on the ground, on top of everything else.”
“Just unnecessary distraction after unnecessary distraction,” he said.
…
The fact that Republicans fared poorer than expected in November—making the runoff not decisive for the Senate majority and making Walker a slight underdog—is a root cause of the fighting.
“A public spat like this isn’t helpful to anybody, including Herschel, but at some level it reflects frustration that a runoff election under these circumstances is a tougher hill to climb,” said Donovan. “Beltway feuding is incidental to the outcome, but it probably wouldn’t be happening if things looked more promising.”
Read the full piece here.