Leaning Right

Just how badly did Herschel Walker botch Georgia?

It’s not that Georgia is suddenly a blue state. Gov. Brian Kemp won his reelection over media darling Stacey Abrams by more than 7 points. The Republican lieutenant governor and attorney general both won their races by 5 points. Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state who stood his ground and refused to cower to then-President Donald Trump‘s demands that he rig the election for his 2020 presidential loss, beat a Democrat by nearly double digits. In fact, every single Republican running for a statewide office in the state won.

Except for Herschel Walker.

After losing to incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in the general election, Walker lost Tuesday’s runoff, and in just the one month that elapsed, he lost nearly 200,000 voters who were willing to hold their nose and vote for an alleged wife-beater if it meant securing Republican control of the Senate, but not once poor GOP performance across the country rendered it a lost cause.

The GOP has had four chances to beat Warnock, a man also accused of domestic abuse. Yet the GOP chose Walker, who fared even worse than flash-in-the-pan Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA).

According to Walker’s son Christian, himself a clamorous conservative on social media, it was Trump who repeatedly pestered the former football star to run for Senate. Walker reportedly kept his team in the dark about incoming scandals, including claims that urged multiple mistresses to get abortions, one of which he allegedly paid for, and abuse allegations.

Walker went into the runoff with the added benefit of $18 million from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) Senate Leadership Fund and Kemp’s extraordinary ground game operation, which the governor generously kept in action to carry Walker to the finish line. And he couldn’t do it.

As a result, Joe Biden became the first president in history whose party has successfully defended every Senate seat with a Democratic incumbent running for reelection. In the past 75 years, presidents have only had a 1-in-5 shot at expanding their Senate control. Well, thanks to Walker, Biden achieved the improbable.

 

Continue Reading at The Washington Examiner.