Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on what’s at stake in Georgia’s primary election

William Brangham:

This election in Georgia has also revealed a high-profile disagreement between Donald Trump, who we saw endorsing David Perdue for governor, and his former vice president, Mike Pence, who is backing current Governor Brian Kemp, and is holding a rally for him tonight.

So let's dive into what's at stake in Georgia with our Politics Monday team. That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of National Public Radio.

Great to see you both. Great to be here.

Amy, help me understand this. Pence is now making his most unambiguous break with President Trump, stumping for the governor that irritates Donald Trump more than any governor in America. But in the midst of this ongoing identity crisis for the GOP, does Pence move the needle in any way?

Amy Walter:

So, I think Mike Pence looks at what's happening in Georgia right now and thinks, oh, well, maybe that's the path for me too.

A governor, Brian Kemp, who stood up to claims by the president that the election was rigged, that he could just simply overturn it, says, no, I'm not doing it. The president threatens him. And, right now, it looks like Kemp's going to run away with this primary.

Mike Pence says, gosh, that sounds familiar, doesn't it? He's told me I could do all these things, overturn the election. Obviously, couldn't do those things. I'm going to present myself much like Brian Kemp did, which is, I'm a conservative candidate with a conservative record without the baggage that Donald Trump brings. I'm not going to talk about 2020. I'm going to talk about the future. We're not going to litigate the past. That's not where voters want us to go.

Now, it's much more complicated when you get into a presidential contest with Donald Trump vs. an incumbent governor that Donald Trump's trying to unseat. But it's clear that that's the pathway that he would like to make for himself.

William Brangham:

I mean, that's Pence's strategy, Amy — but — Tamara, but the — we always get a bit of grief for talking about the former president a lot.

But he does exert a serious gravitational pull in the GOP. And that's why he still has to be factored in all of these races.

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

Certainly.

And even the candidates who are not openly saying that that they have the support of Donald Trump and that they should over — that the election results should be overturned say, well, there are questions, that there are doubts about the election.

So, even the sort of mainstream conservative Republican candidates are saying just enough, playing just enough footsie with the big lie to not turn off Trump voters in a primary.

So, his presence is very real. And you have to look beyond just this one race. He's endorsed something like a dozen candidates in Georgia primaries. Now, many of them are completely unopposed, and he will able to…

William Brangham:

All the way down to the insurance commissioner, he's even endorsed.

(LAUGHTER)

Tamara Keith:

Yes. And he will be able to declare that his candidates, he pulled them across the finish line, even though they were unopposed in some of these cases.

But he also has Herschel Walker, who is his chosen person for the Senate race, and there was really no ability of Republicans — other than Trump Republicans, there was no ability to pull anyone up with him. He is going to be the Republican nominee quite easily, even though there are a lot of Republicans in Georgia and elsewhere who have a lot of concerns about him as their nominee.

William Brangham:

Amy, let's just say that, once the midterms come, and a certain number of these Republican candidates who support this — the idea of the big lie, let's say those candidates lose.

Does that help break this fever within the GOP?

Amy Walter:

Well, I think so much of it is about the leadership, right?

What's going to happen when there are contested elections? What are the leaders in those elections going to do, the candidates in those cases? Are they going to react the way Donald Trump did, say, well, that's the path for us?

And I think we have a couple of examples showing that, really, for the most part, we're not seeing that as becoming sort of part of the DNA or something that candidates are going to do after every election. There was talk after the California recall election that the Republican candidate there wasn't going to concede. He would — he ended up conceding pretty quickly.

More recently, in Pennsylvania, there's a there there's a Senate primary that has still not been called. There are about 1,000 votes separating two candidates. It is going down into legal process. We're talking about absentee ballots. We're talking about signatures, all the things we heard about during the 2020 election.

Both the Republican candidates, though, are sticking with the process.

William Brangham:

Let the process unfold.

Amy Walter:

Let the process work.

Nobody's saying, this has been legitimate, and I'm just going to call myself the winner — or, no, this has been illegitimate. I'm calling myself the winner.

Now, this is early times. But I think those are two pretty good examples to suggest that Donald Trump's way of doing things isn't going to necessarily be the way that candidates decide they're going to follow.

William Brangham:

Tam, what do you think? Does it break the fever if a bunch of these candidates lose?

Tamara Keith:

But there are a bunch of other candidates who are going to win.

You have someone like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, who is — part of his stock and trade and what made him a promising candidate for the Republicans is –and what got him Trump's endorsement is his really strong commitment to the big lie, the fact that he went on January 6 to Washington, D.C., and marched toward the Capitol, though he says he didn't go in or he didn't break the law.

So you have candidates who are going to make it past the primary, who are going to be the party's nominee who may or may not have Trump's backing, but absolutely support the idea of only taking the votes that you want or of only accepting the result that is the result that you like.

So, it is — I think that it's not settled yet whether — whether there will be some candidates who simply say, I'm not accepting the result. There certainly are millions of Americans, Americans who went and saw that "2000 Mules" movie in movie theaters, because it is in theaters. It isn't just in the corners of the Internet. They got it into theaters.

There are Americans who wholly believe that 2020 was stolen. And if you look at the ads that are running in states all over the country in these primaries, they are talking about how the election was stolen, how things were rigged. And it is just feeding upon itself, so that millions of Americans believe that 2020 was rigged.

And if somebody tells them in 2022 or 2024 that it was, they're primed to believe it.

William Brangham:

Yes, I talked a lot of Georgia voters coming out of that film, and they were convinced that this was prima facie evidence of fraud. And it's like we're living in two different ecosystems here.

This whole argument about the big lie is what yielded January 6, to a large degree. We know Congress is going to be holding hearings about this. Some Democrats have promised on that committee that they have blockbuster testimony that they will reveal to the public. We don't know what that is.

But let's just say that that does come to pass. Do you think that that searing day, albeit presented by a congressional hearing, similarly moves people? Is there anything at this point that people could see about January 6 that will change their opinion?

Amy Walter:

I do doubt that to be the case. I just think we have now — the political lines are pretty well set, and they're pretty deep right now.

To Tam's point, if you have already gone and seen a movie, and you're convinced that that movie is right, there's nothing that is going to be shown in a hearing, which Republicans are going to say was completely political and completely biased to work.

The one thing I will say, though, as a tactic, right for being a strong candidate in this election, if you're a Republican, the issue is inflation. The issue is economy. That's what voters across the board are saying is the most important thing to them.

If they decide, instead, these candidates, I'm going to focus on the 2020 election being rigged, I'm going to focus on Donald Trump and showing my loyalty to Donald Trump, polling shows that that is a terrible decision, because independent voters overwhelmingly — just 24 percent of them say, yes, we want a candidate for — a Republican candidate for Congress who's going to focus on the 2020 election.

That's not what they're looking for. Republicans may be, but independent voters are not.

William Brangham:

Tomorrow will certainly be a big test of how these races all unfolded.

Amy Walter:

That's right.

William Brangham:

Amy and Tam, so good to see you. Thank you both very much.

Amy Walter:

You're welcome.

Tamara Keith:

Thank you.