The MAGA GOP’s electoral humiliation will not be complete until Herschel Walker is thrown for a loss one last time.
It would’ve happened already if not for Georgia’s rule requiring that winning Senate candidates score 50 percent. Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock finished on top last Tuesday just short of the magic mark, which means we need a December runoff to ensure that Democrats have 51 seats and that the most embarrassing candidate on the MAGA roster is barred from the chamber he has no business joining.
I’ll risk a prediction: Georgia Republican voters who would’ve held their noses and voted a second time for Herschel if control of the Senate was still at stake will instead take a pass on Dec. 6, now that there’s no compelling reason to support a serial liar and manifest dolt.
Unless I’m proven wrong, of course. Unless they’re fine with the guy’s views on evolution: “At one time, science said man came from apes, did it not?…If that is true, why are there still apes?”
Unless they’re fine with his solutions for gun violence: “What I like to do is see it and everything and stuff…Cain killed Abel. That’s a problem that we have…What about getting a department that’s looking at young men, that’s looking at young women.”
Unless they’re fine with his diagnosis of air pollution: “Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then we got to clean that back up.”
Unless they’re fine with his opposition to green technology, articulated thusly: “What we need to do is keep having those gas-guzzling cars, ’cause we got the good emissions under those cars.”
Unless they’re fine with a fraud who fakes his resume and parades a toy sheriff’s badge.
Unless they’re fine with his views on climate change: “Don’t we have enough trees?”
Unless they’re fine with a chronic violator of family values who sires extramarital kids and pays on the sly for abortions that he claims to oppose.
Granted, white evangelicals are totally fine with the latter item. They adore Walker, as evidenced by their 88 percent support in Round One, which is a tad bizarre given the fact that Rev. Warnock devoted his pre-senatorial career to Jesus. The evangelicals will likely show up again for the clueless dude, but it’s an open question whether others on the GOP voting rolls will do the same en masse. Is denying the Democrats a 51st Senate seat really a sufficient motivation? Especially if the price to be paid is boosting a guy who makes Ron Johnson look like a member of Mensa?
Democratic voters, on the other hand, have sufficient motivation indeed. A 51st seat would provide some breathing room for the new blue majority. A vacancy or illness wouldn’t be a potential crisis, Vice President Harris wouldn’t be needed to cast a tie-breaking vote on legislation or judicial nominees, Democrats wouldn’t need to please the Joe Manchin-Krysten Sinema tag team, and they’d be able to dump the power-sharing agreement that rules a 50-50 Senate. When it’s 50-50, each Senate committee gets an equal number of Ds and Rs; if a Walker loss tilts the chamber to 51-49 blue, each committee gets a blue majority.
Thus far, Democratic donations to Warnock far exceed MAGA GOP donations to Walker – the same pattern as Round One – but what’s truly amusing is that a lot of the fundraisers for Walker (including Trump’s Save America PAC) have been giving Walker only a fraction of the money they raise. Walker’s desperate campaign manager told NBC News yesterday, “This is the last fight of 2022, and every dollar will help. The companies and consultants raising money off this need to cut it out.”
How pathetic it is that the MAGA party’s last senatorial fight of 2022 – with fourth down at their own goal line – hinges on a phony with a dearth of credentials. Or perhaps I’m referencing Trump. Here’s hoping that he lumbers into Georgia to tout Walker in person. That alone could seal the Democratic deal.