Herschel Walker’s son Christian offered his thoughts in a series of tweets after his father flamed out in the runoff election in Georgia for a US Senate seat. In his words (as reported by the Daily Beast),
“Don’t beat women, hold guns to peoples heads, fund abortions then pretend you’re pro-life, stalk cheerleaders, leave your multiple minor children alone to chase more fame, lie, lie, lie, say stupid crap, and make a fool of your family. And then maybe you can win a senate seat.”
He added
“Republicans, we say we don’t play “identity politics” and then you ran this man mainly because he was the same skin color as his opponent with no background other than football. A boring old Republican could have won.”
Christian had more to say.
“The Truth: Trump called my dad for months DEMANDING that he run. Everyone with a brain begged him: ‘PLEASE DON’T DO THIS. This is too dirty, you have an insane past… PLEASE DONT DO THIS.’ We got the middle finger. He ran.”
And he wrapped up with support for a woman Hershel abused, Christian’s mother.
“I’m so happy she can rest now, and this bull crap is over with.”
It would be easy to assume that a clash in political beliefs informed Christian’s antipathy to his father — that a conservative father had sired a liberal child. It would not be the first time a son and father clashed over philosophy. But this is not that.
Christian is a conservative. Initially, he supported his father’s run. It was only after the revelation of other children and serial abortions showed that Hershel was a man of dubious character that Christian admitted to himself, and then to the world, that his father was a crap human being.
But the GOP establishment ignored the warnings. Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, Tom Cotton, Newt Gingrich, and the rest of the GOP’s white establishment rallied behind the Trump-blessed, MAGA moron Herschel Walker. And the Republican great Black hope took on the Democratic incumbent, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, and fumbled the ball again, and again, and again, and again.
The results were disastrous.
In 2022, Brian Kemp won reelection as Georgia’s Governor by 7.5% and 300,000 votes, while on the same day, 200,000 Kemp voters did not vote for Walker. In yesterday’s runoff, Walker lost by 3% and 100,000 votes.
The Democrats like to think that Georgia is a purple state trending blue. They have support for their position — having beaten the GOP in three Senate elections in two years. And voters sometimes split their tickets. Northeastern states often have Republican Governors but almost universally stick with Democratic Senators and majority-Democratic House delegations.
So Christian’s contention that a “boring old (aka white) Republican could have won” may not be true. However, the race would have been a lot closer.
The demographics of the runoff vote would be instructive. Did Walker cause Blacks to vote Republican? If so, a white candidate should not rely on them doing so again in the future.
But if Walker’s vote was overwhelmingly white, Republicans have hope that a Kemp-type candidate (think Youngkin in Virginia) would flip at least one Senate seat back to the GOP. They could anticipate that white voters who prefer not to vote for pond scum would return to the ballot box with a morally defensible candidate.
The Democrats are praying that the GOP base continues to pick low-quality, rubber-room candidates. And the Republican powers-that-be, and their deep-pocketed sponsors, should not expect that Trump's inevitable irrelevance will be the panacea for what ails them.
Before Trump and the MAGA madness, there was the Tea Party’s finest:
The GOP is not about to reclaim the high ground of sanity anytime soon. And the rhetoric of GOP House leader — and the man who wants to be Speaker so desperately he will kiss every ass — Kevin McCarthy points to a House GOP soon to be mired in fruitless Benghazi-style hearings. And America will again wonder if Republicans are capable of original thought. Or even doing something that helps people.
And it is safe to assume that the Senate Republicans will not take a break from their endless Fox News auditions and ceaseless pursuit of conservative cash to act like grown-ups. Walker may not have made it to the Senate’s hallowed halls. But there are plenty already there, no more qualified or able to conduct the national business than a brain-damaged ball carrier of yesteryear.