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FYI, an attempted coup is still an attempted coup even if it fails (quite a few do). And here's a definition of a coup from the primary dataset on the subject: "illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive."
Note the parts about "other elites" and unseating the executive. If, for example, the legislatures of Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania decided to ignore the popular vote and appoint Republican electors, that would be a coup. It would violate state law and unseat the executive.
Is this likely to succeed? Probably not. But we don't call an attempted assassination something else just because it fails.
To be clear, those arguing for discarding millions of valid votes or outright ignoring statewide popular votes in a naked grab for power & in contravention of state and/or federal constitutions are advocating a coup. The question is whether they go from advocating to attempting.
It doesn't take much to go from this to deciding the elections were so fundamentally flawed that the GA legislature should be free to send Trump electors to the Electoral College. Anyone dismissing the possibility of a coup hasn't been paying attention. https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1326275981443784710
The key problem for GA Republicans today is they'd need the Secretary of State to sign off on any claims of widespread fraud (which would "necessitate" bypassing the popular vote). The current SecState (Raffensperger) seems unwilling to do that. Thus the calls for him to resign.
To remove the SecState through impeachment, the GA GOP would need a majority vote in the State House & 2/3 vote in the State Senate. They're 3-4 votes short of that super-majority in the latter. Which means they need Raffensperger to either resign or accept their claims of fraud.
There's definitely no plan for a coup. https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-asked-aides-could-pursue-113507375.html
If only there was a term for an elite conspiracy to bypass an election result and keep the incumbent in office. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/brad-raffensperger-georgia-vote/2020/11/16/6b6cb2f4-283e-11eb-8fa2-06e7cbb145c0_story.html
