The Last Year of Herschel Walker: The Challenge of Running for a Repealable Senate Candidate and Restoring the Power of the Republican Party
The last week of Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign – beset by a report that he paid for a woman he was dating to have an abortion more than a decade ago – has been an utter disaster.
And it’s been made worse by the fact that smart Republican strategists have known for the better part of a year that Walker was a) deeply untested and b) deeply unpredictable as a candidate.
More than a year ago, in response to an Associated Press story detailing Walker’s turbulent past – including reportedly threatening his ex-wife and exaggerating his business successes – Josh Holmes, a longtime confidante to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, was blunt in his assessment of the situation.
And while McConnell stayed silent publicly, he was operating behind the scenes to try to maneuver Walker from his prime position in the Georgia Senate primary.
Several sources say that McConnell has suggested that David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler look into running again after their narrow losses in the Senate race in January.
The most important thing for McConnell, Cotton and Scott is not Walker’s credentials. But he represents potentially the 51st Republican vote in the Senate if he can win the race – and therefore a return to power for the GOP. So there was never any idea that he would be abandoned.
Donald Trump had endorsed Walker. He was (and is) a celebrity in Georgia due to his football accomplishments. None of the other potential high-profile GOP candidates – like Perdue and Loeffler – ended up running.
But those initial doubts that led him – and one of his top political consiglieres – to be skeptical of Walker never went away. It was a classic example of, if you can’t beat them, join them.
The modern Republican Party’s one non-negotiable value is this: the ruthless pursuit of power. Those who hold principle over political advancement are stripped away by party leaders who recognize this.
It was a year ago that pundits celebrated Virginia’s governor for finding a way to win a blue state while keeping ex- President Donald Trump at arms-length and for making a Republican campaign plan not based on election denialism. Yet on Wednesday, Youngkin had an arm around Kari Lake, the new GOP sensation and ultra-MAGA candidate in Arizona’s governor’s race. The nominee refused in a CNN interview on Sunday to commit to recognizing the result of her race if she doesn’t win and is running hard as a loyal member of the ex-President’s election denial movement.
The winning team is the winning team, and the elections have consequences, said Youngkin, urging all Republicans to get behind Lake in order to make a future in the party.
There is nothing ostensibly wrong with a political party prioritizing a single-minded focus on winning power. Politics is a way of seeing the world. And successful parties and leaders understand election victories are paramount. Democratic presidents from Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton were known for doing what needed to be done to win, reshaping their own principles if necessary. Johnson, a former senate majority leader, was ruthless in his authority gained at the ballot box. Nancy Pelosi has been speaker of the House for almost two decades without being determined to use her power.
This is a leap for a party that used to pride itself on promoting global democracy against tyranny. Republicans who defended these values against Trump, including Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, were ostracized. Flake did not run for reelection and Cheney, the vice chair of the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, lost her primary this summer to a Trump-backed challenger. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a giant in the party because the Trump base adores her.
The most recent example of naked power is when Kevin McCarthy rushed to the Mar-a-Lago residence to mend his relationship with Donald Trump after he criticized him over the Capitol insurrection. The California lawmaker knew that his party’s hope of a House majority and his own dreams of being speaker hinged on a rapprochement with Trump and his base voters.
McConnell knows the difference between living with a party leader like Trump who is deportment and living with one who is personality and personality deficient. McConnell rode the Trump wave and completed his quest for an unassailable Supreme Court majority. If Republicans take control of the Senate, he will be in a strong position to change the makeup of the judiciary. He is close to becoming the longest serving senator ever, despite Trump trying to topple him from his leadership post.
And McConnell has shrugged off Trump’s insults and racist social media posts against his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. He’s done more than keep quiet. The Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC affiliated with the minority leader, has poured tens of millions of dollars into key races – including in states like Ohio and Georgia in a bid to bail out misfiring candidates effectively crowned as party nominees by none other than Trump.
In New Hampshire, where the GOP nominee has said he won’t vote for McConnell, McConnell’s affiliated super PAC is spending. But it’s another pickup opportunity that could bolster a possible GOP majority.
When several US senators flew in Georgia to rescue Hershel Walker, they displayed the impulse to win control of Congress at all costs, even if it seems to compromise values the GOP claims to stand for.
Walker’s two surrogates – Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who heads the GOP’s Senate campaign arm, and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton – behaved as though Walker was just any other Republican candidate.
He’s doing much the same now – appearing with Trump candidates like Lake and Michigan GOP gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon, but also stumping with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who fended off Trump’s efforts to oust him earlier this year.
So while his endorsement may be valuable to Lake in a close gubernatorial race, her rising star power in Trump world also offered a strong incentive for his trip. It explains his embrace of the political personality who wouldn’t have been allowed to attend his events last year.
What Do We Need to Know Before We Hop to Run Into Nevada? Chuck Schumer, Scott Biden, and the New York National Guard Base
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed some concern Thursday over Democratic prospects in Georgia in the final weeks before the midterm elections, but he remained hopeful about Pennsylvania after the their nominee’s recent debate performance.
Georgia is where we are going downhill. It’s hard to believe that they will go for Herschel Walker,” the Democratic leader said of the Republican Senate nominee, adding later, “But our vote, our early turnout in Georgia is huge, huge.”
Schumer said that the debate did not hurt Pennsylvania, so that was good.
Schumer, Biden and Hochul were in a conversation on the tarmac of a New York National Guard base. Biden was in the state as part of his closing message, where he painted Republicans as threatening to Americans pocketbooks.
Less than two weeks out from Election Day, Democrats are fighting to hold onto their narrow majority in the 50-50 Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris has the tie-breaking vote. Both Georgia, which Democrats are defending, and Pennsylvania, which represents their best opportunity to flip a seat, are critical to that mission.
Nevada is one of the places where the party is picking up steam.
Most polling shows Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who’s running for a full six-year term, with a modest lead over Walker in the final stretch of the campaign.
Abortion as an Important Issue in the 2016 Pennsylvania Senate Race: An Argument for the PACs of Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy
Oz aides did not reply. Oz said women, doctors, local political leaders should make abortion policy in his debate last month. According to exit polls conducted for CNN and other media, abortion was the most important issue in the Pennsylvania Senate race and Oz performed poorly among those who said it was their most important issue.
“You can’t afford to give a clown a vote on Roe v. Wade,” Fetterman told MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Thursday, adding that Oz’s comment showed “what he actually believes about abortion.”
The effects of Fetterman’s stroke were the focus of the post-debate attention while Democrats seized on Oz’s comments.
“We wanted to be and thought it was important to be there. And we showed up,” the Democrat told Reid. “And getting knocked down, I always got back up. And, to me, that’s really at the essence of our campaign, is that we’re running for any Pennsylvanian that ever got knocked down that has to get back up. That is really what we are running on.
Mitch McConnell’s high-spending super PAC has a suggestion for their party’s campaign committee: Consider picking candidates in primaries who won’t collapse in the general election.
Others see a much bigger issue: Former President Donald Trump and his polarizing presence on the campaign trail – especially as he teased a 2024 campaign in the final days of the midterms.
There is abortion and Republican hand-wringing about their party’s inability to respond to the onslaught of Democratic attacks. All the while, some are taking out their frustration at party leaders like McConnell and Kevin McCarthy.
The former president is being blamed by Republicans for the blue tint of the House and Senate in the past two cycles.
As votes are being counted in Nevada and Georgia, Herschel Walker will face a Democratic senator in a December 6 runoff. In New Hampshire and Arizona, where McConnell’s senate leadership fund and the NRSC had different strategies, retired Army brigadier general Don Bolduc lost. A race that could cost their party the majority ended in a loss for Dr. Mehmet Oz.
Oz suffered because the GOP nominee for governor, a supporter of Trump, ended up dragging down the rest of the team, according to Sen. Pat Toomey.
“There’s a very high correlation between MAGA candidates and big losses,” added Toomey, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. If fealty to Donald Trump is the primary criteria for selecting candidates, my party will not do very well.
“Chairman (Rick) Scott and the NRSC respect the will of Republican primary voters and we were proud to stand by our candidates every step of the way,” Hartline said. “Anyone who hates our candidates hates the Republican voters who chose them. It is as simple as that. Others are welcome to get involved in primaries, but that’s not something the NRSC does.”
Scott, a Florida Republican, had predicted 52 GOP Senate seats and said there was a path to 55. McConnell had long viewed the race for the Senate as a jump ball, and stayed away from making predictions.
One of the things to spend resources was how to use it. Scott’s GOP critics worried the NRSC might leave Republican candidates with the bag in the last few weeks of the campaign, even though the committee wanted to define democrats as early and heavily. The NRSC’s advertising support to underfunded candidates was praised by Law.
Law told CNN that the approach to the cycle was to focus on a realistic path to 51 seats rather than hope for a red wave that would take us to a larger majority.
Left and right: What the GOP should have done in the run-up of the 2020 midterm elections after the SLF-NRSC conflict
There were several differences between the SLF and NRSC. One was in messaging; McConnell wanted a referendum on Biden’s agenda, while Scott wanted to also promote a platform of what a Republican Senate could do.
Sununu gave a boost at the most critical time in the primary, when he endorsed Chuck Morse, according to his spokesman.
In June, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion, sending the issue to the states. Republicans were not prepared for the fight over abortion because they had fought for so long to strip it from the constitution.
A House Republican also said the party was hurt by its lack of a cohesive message on abortion, saying most Republicans “turned their backs on women after Roe.”
Marjorie Jones Dannenfelser sounded sad on a call with reporters when she praised the victories of conservative candidates.
Dannenfelser said the expectations were high, which made them sound slightly disappointed. “I’m not a pollster, though I know some. And so their expectations were very high.”
Dannenfelser criticized Mehmet Oz because he adopted an “ostrich” or “possum” stance in his attempt to avoid the hot-button issue. “Oz lost – and others – because they hoped that the issue would go away,” added Dannenfelser.
Trump didn’t concede the 2020 election because he didn’t want the entire Republican party to embrace his lie and he criticized those who did. Republicans like Masters and Bolduc won the primary catering to Trump’s whims, and rejected McConnell. After his loss, Trump attacked him for flipping on whether the election was stolen, even after he changed his position on the issue.
Throughout the election cycle, McCarthy and party leaders consistently said Trump would play a key role in their midterm strategy and did not seek to put any distance between the GOP and the former president. But behind the scenes, leaders counseled Republican candidates to not make Trump a focus of their campaigns.
Meanwhile, a key part of the Democrats’ midterm message was linking Republicans to the Trump-wing of the party, painting their GOP opponents as “MAGA extremists.” Republicans don’t like the effectiveness of the label.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/10/politics/republican-reaction-midterm-results/index.html
The Time for the Party to Become More Popular: Rep.-elect Mike Lawler of New York urged Democrats to move beyond the former president
GOP Rep.-elect Mike Lawler of New York, who toppled the head of the Democrats’ campaign committee, said he would like to see Republicans move past the former president.
Lawler told CNN he wants to see the party move forward. “I think anytime you are focused on the future, you can’t so much go to the past. And I think people are really excited about the opportunity to address the challenges that we’re facing as a country, and I think more focus needs to be on the issues and the substance of those issues than on personalities.”
Trump’s near-constant presence in the media, driven in part by decisions to publicly campaign in the final weeks before Election Day, also diminished the Republican argument that the election was a referendum on the Biden administration, rather than a choice between the two parties.
Law, whose organization spent $211.5 million on TV ads this cycle and an additional $73 million from its affiliated nonprofit, the most of any group in Senate races this cycle, indicated that Trump’s reemergence on the campaign trail could’ve helped Democrats.
“I am proud to endorse Donald Trump for president in 2024,” Stefanik said in a statement to CNN. It is time for Republicans to join together around the most popular one in America who has a strong conservative track record.