POLL: Did Trump's lies about voter fraud hurt the GOP long term?

[brucejoel99]

Depends on what exactly qualifies as "hurting them long-term." The lies costing them the GA runoffs & thus the Senate for up to 2 years would seemingly qualify as merely being a short-term loss on the face of it, but what that also lost them by extension was their de-facto veto over - among other items - nominations, particularly judgeships. For instance, blocking Merrick Garland was an undeniable long-term win for the GOP, but they're no longer capable of exercising another such block so long as the Democrats are in the majority. That is, there's nothing whatsoever that they can do about Biden nominating & the Senate confirming a bunch of 40-year-old liberals to all of the vacant seats on the bench, whereas they would've been able to just block all of them had Trump not engaged in the lies & cost them the runoffs & the Senate as a result. So the question is: does not being able to block a bunch of liberals from the bench qualify as a long-term loss, just as blocking Garland undeniably qualified as a long-term win?