The GOP Hasn't Solved Its Herschel Walker Problem

[applegrove]

The GOP Hasn’t Solved Its Herschel Walker Problem

December 7, 2022 at 4:04 pm EST By Taegan Goddard 48 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2022/12/07/the-gop-hasnt-solved-its-herschel-walker-problem/

"SNIP........

Jonathan Bernstein: “For a non-negligible minority of Americans, the biggest political story of the moment isn’t who won last night’s runoff in Georgia. It’s the supposed conspiracy to suppress the truth about corrupt business dealings by President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.”

“The crusade against the younger Biden is easy to dismiss as yet another trumped up narrative designed to keep Fox News viewers engaged. But the continued obsession with fringe theories and paranoid claims helps explain why Republicans have wound up with so many embarrassing and unsuccessful candidates, culminating in the defeat Tuesday of Senate hopeful Herschel Walker in his attempt to unseat Democrat Raphael Warnock.”

“While former President Donald Trump has made the bad-candidate problem worse — he did, after all, personally recruit Walker, and he frequently tried to boost the nomination chances of candidates who ran poorly in November — the underlying supply-side and demand-side problems were there before Trump, and they aren’t going away even if the former president finally does. And the predicament is making it harder for Republicans to govern effectively when they do win.”

.......SNIP"

[Meadowoak]

1. It's a feature, not a bug.

[Shermann]

2. Admitting You Have a Herschel Walker Problem is the First Step nt

[Demovictory9]

9. Ha! Yep

[ProudMNDemocrat]

3. Good! Let the GOP fall on their faces.

Their poor quality candidates are their problem.

Democrats put up a very good slate. With Sen.Warnock handily defeating Hershel Walker, Democrats can go into 2023 feeling fairly confident.

[vlyons]

4. Decent people

People with honor and integrity, people who value truth telling, adding value and service to their community, people who learned long ago to practice self-control over body, speech, and mind don't join the republican party, and certainly don't run as Republican candidates. Those kind of people left the republican party long ago.

[gratuitous]

5. Bad candidates are a Republican staple

But for me, Herschel Walker represents a type in the Sarah Palin mold: A cynical attempt to put forward a bad candidate that fits certain criteria. In 2008, after a tough primary fight, Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination for the presidency against Hillary Clinton. In the immediate aftermath, a "grass roots" group sprang up called "Party Unity My Ass" or PUMA. There were purported Democrats who couldn't get over the result of the primaries, and claimed that they wouldn't vote in the general election because of the shabby treatment Clinton received from the party stalwarts.

PUMA lasted just long enough for Republicans to name as John McCain's running mate the governor of Alaska, who had squeaked out a victory for the governorship in a three-way race. That governor was Sarah Palin, who had virtually nothing else to recommend her for the spot. A lot of Democrats saw her anointment to the national ticket as a cynical maneuver to pick up the PUMA vote; hey, one woman's just as good as another, right? So vote Republican!

McCain-Palin got waxed in the election, and Republicans couldn't figure out why their devastatingly cunning plan didn't work out. Herschel Walker's candidacy sprang from the same rotten tree of cynical appeal: You want to elect a Black man to the Senate? Sure, Raphael Warnock has some qualifications, of a sort, but Herschel Walker is Black, too! And he played football for Georgia! One's just as good as the other, right?

[Jade Fox]

11. +1

[applegrove]

16. +100 I don't remember PUMAs but you are right about George W. Bush

and Palin lowering the bar.

[gratuitous]

18. PUMAs were there and gone

Kind of like a Broadway show that closes at intermission. But they were there just long enough for some enterprising Republican operative to persuade someone somewhere that Sarah Palin was the key to the 2008 election.

Nitwits.

[applegrove]

19. All three are dyslexic (Bush, Palin, Trump). Dyslexics are visual

and can paint a picture, read a crowd, don't get bored repeating the same message over and over, are good in dynamic situations like campaigns and counterpunch using visuals like in a real fight rather than prepared language (Jeb was thought to be a threat but was not nearly as good as GWB counterpunching, no surprise Jeb is not a dyslexic and was a disappointment). We are big picture people. GOP has been farming dyslexics because they appeal well like Rubio. But the dumb ones have been winning. Smart dyslexics like Ronald Reagan (communication), JFK, Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt (FR'S eyes and ears who traveled the country), Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, George Washington and Napoleon seem to be hard to find these days. Yet they are keeping Rubio from voting often so he could run as a centrist Presidential candidate some day. Maybe, maybe, after Trump and the chasm between who the rabid right wing base thinks is a good candidate and what the moderate Republicans, traditionals and Independents thinks is a good Republican candidate, maybe they will get over trying to find a dyslexic above all else.Because like any other group of people some are smarter than others and because they keep narratives separate the evil noise machine can get not so smart dyslexics to believe almost anything.

[doc03]

6. Walker made a sane intelligent concession speach.

While campaigning he talked like a lunatic. WTF did he want to lose?

[ProfessorGAC]

12. A Couple Thoughts On That

During the campaign, they were still playing to their precious "base". They let him loose on the campaign trail because the "anti-woke" tone was more important than any policy message.
Concession speeches aren't delivered to the base. It's intended for everyone else, especially for those that held their nose & voted for him.
I think for this they wrote the speech and coached him to follow the script, which he seems to have done.
The real Walker was the one we saw campaigning. In one small defense, he athletic background might have created a resistance to being a sore loser.

[usonian]

13. Football players are trained to fight like demons during the game and to accept defeat.

This is the reason he conceded.

Oops. Nice white gloves on

[bucolic_frolic]

7. They lowered the bar several times

For GWB, and to the floor for Sarah Palin. That let Trump in. Now there's no barrier at all to entry.

[33taw]

8. The candidates are reflective of their ideals.

Before the general election in November, CNN said “Democrats were out of touch with voters”. Funny, they never retracted that statement or pinned it on Republicans. I think that is the real issue, Republicans are out of touch or on a whole different wavelength than voters. The public is pro-choice - so of course, Republican double down on pro-life. The public supports same-sex marriage - so Republicans go on the attack to overturn same-sex marriage. The majority of Americans want universal health benefits - so, naturally the Republicans call it an entitlement. Then when they start to lose voters-everyone is shocked - why?

[Alexander Of Assyria]

10. Werewolves. Republicans are werewolves is what's shocking, voters have had enough.

Also shocking is what took voters so long. Today Georgia, tomorrow the rest of the werewolf dens?

[louis-t]

14. Said it before, I'll say it again.

Republicans will always gravitate toward the dumbest person in the room.

[SharonClark]

17. Well said.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

15. The Gangsters Of Putin relies on its propaganda machine to elect candidates. It almost worked.

[republianmushroom]

20. The GOP is the Herschel Walker Problem

[NullTuples]

21. May I just say...I appreciate only using 'trump' in the context of dishonesty rather than victory.