GOP’S terrible candidates star in election horror show
Down to the finish line, people. Elections are just about a month away. A ton of races to keep track of, but if you’re looking for diversion, you’ll find some of the Senate campaigns really ... unusual.
In a normal year —
OK, let’s just admit there hasn’t been any such thing for ages. But if normal years existed in American politics and this was one of them, we could reasonably assume the Republicans were going to be big winners.
Except — whoops — the Republicans have assembled a trove of truly terrible candidates. I know you know that we have to begin this discussion with Herschel Walker.
A few days ago, Georgia looked like a prime possibility for a turnover. It tilts strongly toward the GOP, and Walker seemed like your normal Republican candidate by 2022 standards — terrible, yeah, but with some political pluses.
His autobiography vividly described a spectacular rise to sports, school and business success after a childhood in which “I was an outcast, a stuttering-stumpy-fat-poor-otherside-of-the-railroad-tracksliving-stupid-country boy.”
On the minus side, Walker was a tad, well, fictional on points ranging from his achievements to the number of his children. Walker also has a very angry and social media-skilled son who describes him as a terrible father to four kids by four different women, who “wasn’t in the house raising one of them.”
Plus, Walker seems totally out to lunch when it comes to ... issue stuff. He attacked Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act with its emphasis on halting global warming, as did many, many conservatives. But I’m pretty sure Walker was the only one who argued that “we have enough trees.”
So maybe not a perfect pick for a candidate to run against incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, a longtime public speaker, community activist and pastor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s old church. But hey, Walker was a really good football player! And a Donald Trump fave!
The Daily Beast reported that one of Walker’s ex-girlfriends says he’d paid for her to have an abortion, sending the check for $700 along with ... a get-well card. Rather problematic for a candidate who calls for a “no exceptions” abortion ban.
Walker isn’t the only awful candidate the Republicans are fielding. In the GOP’S search for terrible candidates for winnable races, we can’t overlook Arizona. It’s a very tough state for Democrats. The incumbent, Mark Kelly, won the seat after John Mccain’s death with the power of his story — an astronaut who took his wife’s place as family politician after she was shot in the head while meeting with constituents. Many of his supporters feared he’d be doomed to defeat in a year like 2022.
Enter Blake Masters, the Trump-backed GOP nominee who appeared in one early campaign ad toting a short-barreled rifle that he kinda boasted was designed not for hunting but “to kill people.”
Masters, a venture capitalist, rose into political prominence with the backing of Peter Thiel, billionaire megadonor. You certainly cannot dismiss a candidate with that kind of money, even if he does have a history of blaming gun violence on “Black people, frankly,” and making a video in war paint in which he makes fun of people who worry about “cultural insensitivity.”
Lots to look out for, especially if you’re not interested in another “Halloween” movie. Hey, you don’t need to go to a movie theater to be horrified. Just think what the Senate would be like if these guys win.