McDONOUGH, Ga. — “You know who’s responsible for gridlock in Washington?” David Perdue, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Georgia, put the question to a boisterous crowd at a noonday rally here, and there was no hesitation.
“Harry Reid!” the crowd answered.
This was a well-trained Republican audience, one that has listened for years to talk radio and Fox News directing their anger with pinpoint accuracy at the Senate Democratic Leader’s office. And it was exactly the name Mr. Perdue wanted to hear.
“Harry Reid! He has got hundreds of bills stuck on his desk,” he went on. “Why is he blocking those bills? To allow Barack Obama to run our country and our government, and set the direction for our country, using executive orders and regulatory mandates without Congress.”
He didn’t mention, of course, that much of the most important legislation has become stuck not in Mr. Reid’s Senate, but in the Republican-controlled House. For example Mr. Reid and the Senate actually passed — with Republican support — an immigration bill that was killed by the Republican leadership in the House. It was that failure that led to the possibility of an executive order on immigration by President Obama, not anything done by Mr. Reid.
But these myths, particularly the one about the conspiracy to let the president rule with an iron fist, die hard among conservatives. They want to believe, as Mr. Perdue insisted today, that Mr. Obama has been the most divisive president in history, that he shut the door to all negotiations with Republicans, that “good conservative voters” need to take back their country.
It was left unsaid who they must take it back from, but here in fast-growing Henry County, just south of Atlanta, the once-solid Republican majority has been declining. George Bush won 66 percent of the vote here in 2000, while Mitt Romney won only 51 percent in 2012. A significant reason for that is the rapid increase in black and Hispanic residents in this area.
Similar numbers statewide have given the Democrat in the Senate race, Michelle Nunn, a slight edge, as shown in a CNN poll that came out today.
That’s probably why Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who introduced Mr. Perdue at today’s rally, felt it necessary to exaggerate what it would mean to elect Mr. Perdue and other Republican senators.
“Until we take over the majority, we will never get a chance to fix the tax code,” he said. “If you’ve got 49 Republicans, you get zero percent of the agenda. You get to 51 Republicans, you get 100 percent of the agenda.”
One hundred percent? Tell it to the Democrats who have seen little of their agenda enacted with 53 senators. Tell it, in fact, to Harry Reid.