Where does Republican Party turn after 2020? Voters weigh in at Columbus Pence rally
Alyce Ellis has a passion for Republican politics.
She grew up in Fulton County, Georgia, but lives now in Smiths Station, Alabama, where she settled when she got out of the Army at Fort Benning.
On Thursday she was marching into Vice President Mike Pence’s rally at the Columbus airport, her hair and big Trump 2020 flag blowing in a brisk breeze that had Republican volunteers huddled together against the cold as they checked the temperatures of spectators going in.
“You want to know what’s wrong with the Republican Party?” Ellis said. “You have a lot of people who claim to be Republicans, but they’re too scared to stand up and remember the true … American spirit. And you want to know where the advancement of the American Republican Party is going? It’s going back to the true spirit of 1776, the Constitution, ‘We the people,’ ‘Don’t tread on me.’”
It has been a tumultuous year for the Republican Party, with President Donald Trump’s defeat in the Nov. 3 General Election — still a matter of dispute to his supporters, although nearly every lawsuit debating the election’s validity has failed — and Georgia’s two U.S. Senate candidates in tight runoff races.
Control of the Senate is what brought Pence to Columbus on a cold and windy Thursday afternoon where attendees — some masked and some not — bunched together for warmth.
Electing U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, Pence said, was important because the Georgian senators “could be the last line of defense.”
“Stay in the fight for integrity for our elections. Stay in the fight to defend the Republican majority in the Senate until the polls close on Jan. 5,” he said. “Stay in the fight until we send David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler back to Washington.”
Where does the Republican Party go from here?
Pence’s 24-minute speech echoed the fighting spirit Ellis mentioned. Pence said he and President Trump received more than 74 million votes in the 2020 Presidential election — more than 10 million ahead of Trump’s 2016 mark. Republicans were also able to flip 12 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Trump and his supporters will continue to fight the November election results in courts, Pence said.
“As our election contest continues in courthouses across the land, we’re going to keep fighting until every legal vote is counted. We’re going to keep fighting until every illegal vote is thrown out.”
Some supporters in attendance, like Ellis, don’t believe former Vice President Joe Biden won in Georgia, after Barack Obama could not.
Marc Swift echoed that sentiment.
“I could see Trump coming through this and being in office next year for four more years,” he said. “He was ripped off. They took the votes from him. He legitimately won. Why wouldn’t he be president?”
He foresees the Republican Party gaining strength: “Whatever happens now, the opposition is only going to make it stronger,” he said, noting the party picked up seats in the House of Representatives. “It’s just getting stronger, and it’s wider and more inclusive of all kinds of different people.”
A few attendees during Pence’s speech supported the president’s unsubstantiated claims that fraudulent absentee ballots cost Trump the election. Pence encouraged attendees to vote early by mail or in-person as one member of the audience yelled out that people should vote in person.
“I want you to be confident about your vote,” Pence said. “We’re on them this time. We’re watching. We’re going to secure our polls, secure our drop boxes. You can be confident — you mail in that absentee ballot, every single one of them will be counted.”
Longtime Republican voters Toby and Sharyn Antinore had a less optimistic view.
“To be honest, if we don’t win, or if we don’t straighten out, it’s going to be very limited, because they’ve got an agenda, and they are not going to fail,” he said of Democrats.
Said Sharyn: “If the Republicans who are voted in as Republicans stay with Trump and with the Republican Party, it will be all right…. Once they get into office, it seems like they all switched to the Democrats. I just don’t really trust any of them. I trust President Trump, Vice President Pence. But the governors, the senators, congressmen, none of them; I don’t trust any of them.”
They felt other Republican leaders, particularly Supreme Court justices, abandoned Trump when he needed them, and did so without explanation.
Michelle Sabate agreed.
“I’m very mad at Mitch McConnell,” she said of the Senate majority leader, “because he declared Biden president, before this is all over. I still think we have a lot more investigation to do.”
She believes the Republican Party will carry on.
“I think after the next election, if Biden is president, the Republican Party is going to push forward. I’m very happy with a lot of the things that we’re doing,” she said, pointing to immigration, tax cuts, the COVID-19 response and the low unemployment that preceded the pandemic.
A changing party
Aaron Neal said he didn’t care for politics until Trump came along, but the president drew him to the Republican Party.
“I’m 29. I had the opportunity to vote for Obama, but I wasn’t into politics, and then I joined the Marine Corps, and I saw certain things about Obama’s presidency that I didn’t like, so I just didn’t vote,” he said.
He voted for Trump because he noticed how many goods sold in America are made in China, and Trump promised to fix that, he said. “I don’t even know if I would consider myself Republican. I just voted for Trump.”
Asked about what happens next, he said: “I don’t know, but it scares me.” He worries about illegal immigration, jobs going to China, and regular voters lacking the power to overcome establishment candidates, he said.
Jacob Battle, who’s 74, said he’s been voting Republican for about 20 years. He foresaw a bleak future for the party.
“If Trump was the greatest thing that ever happened to the Republican Party, and the Republican Party did not stand behind him, and fully support him, and so there’s no way for the Republican Party to go up once the Democrat Party has taken the White House. There can’t ever be a comeback.”
Bree Babb said she could see the party reaching a crossroads. She was walking into Thursday’s rally with Krysten Weatherford, who said she’s also a regular Republican voter.
Both saw an uncertain future: “I’m really scared,” Weatherford said. “I’m worried about the government getting too big. I’m worried about the middle class just being completely wiped out. I think they’re going to make themselves richer and us poorer.”
Asked who she meant by “they,” she said, “Any politician, really.”
Shifts within the Republican Party over the last several years have alienated some voters — people like 67-year-old Dwight New and his wife Pamela.
The Harris County couple voted for George W. Bush in the 2004 election, but on Wednesday night they were sitting in their car with their 32-year-old son, Chris, waiting for the start of an Ossoff drive-in rally.
Both said they were tired of seeing their nation break apart and expressed frustration that the Trump administration failed to follow the advice of public health experts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“He’s intelligent. He knows what he’s talking about. He’s got an agenda,” Dwight New said of Ossoff. “Whereas, I don’t think the competition has an agenda. Everything I’ve seen is them slamming the other candidates and not really saying what they are going to do.”
This story was originally published December 17, 2020 at 4:03 PM.