That a candidate with a history of domestic violence and multiple “secret” children — kids the former football star Herschel Walker fathered but never parented — could still win a U.S. Senate seat doesn’t surprise me as much as I wish it did.
That pro-life Republicans care more about Walker’s political opposition to abortion than whether he pressed a former girlfriend to have one in 2009 doesn’t surprise me at all.
“Do you wait for a candidate who is perfect?” the Rev. Anthony George, senior pastor of the First Baptist Church Atlanta, asked this week, even as new Walker scandals just kept coming. “Herschel would have to do and say a whole lot for me to not support him” over the Democratic incumbent, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. At least Pastor George is honest enough to admit that he can’t think of anything at all that “our fellow conqueror, our brother, our friend” Walker could say or do that would put him off.
Walker himself has said both that the allegations are false and that “the Lord has forgiven me.” And those who are sticking with him don’t seem to care which it is. Or whether he’s lying when he calls the abortion story a lie. On Thursday morning, he told Hugh Hewitt, “If that had happened, I would have said there’s nothing to be ashamed of there.” At a news conference later, he said he hadn’t said any such thing. His supporters are not in a twist about any of this.
“I could care less if he paid for somebody’s abortion,” 68-year-old Republican Mike Upchurch told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “You know what? I can close my eyes and watch the fabulous games he played as a running back with Georgia ... and, well, I wouldn’t vote for a Democrat anyway.”
This was a close race all along, so the erosion that we have seen in Walker’s support, especially as a result of his son Christian Walker’s revelations about a lifetime of abuse and neglect, may still keep the worst Senate nominee since Alabama Republican Roy Moore from taking office.
But whether Walker wins or not, those who are hanging in there with him are making clear to all future candidates that their only real expectation is that they not be a member of the Democratic Party.
Former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch says her one concern is winning. Whether “Walker used his money to reportedly pay some skank for an abortion” did not concern her at all, she said. “I don’t know if he did it or not. I don’t even care.”
Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition and former chair of the Georgia Republican Party, gave a bunch of different reasons for staying with Walker: “Well, I think in this particular case,” he said in an interview with NPR, “we’re dealing with a 13-year-old anonymous allegation that no other media organization has been able to independently verify. We don’t know who the accuser is. Herschel denies it. And to be perfectly honest with you, in the aftermath of the Steele dossier and the Access Hollywood tape and the October surprise in October of 2018 of Brett Kavanaugh being accused of sexual assault and serial rape, most of those charges were disproven. The main charge was never proven. I think voters are largely being inured to these kind of October surprises. Herschel denies this allegation. And I think voters are going to vote on the issues,” like inflation, the price of gas and how they feel about Joe Biden.
Those aren’t really issues at all, but complaints about global trends that Republicans are hoping voters blame on the president. Though character clearly no longer matters, Reed’s party has flipped on so many matters in the Trump era that it’s hard to say what they believe, beyond the abortion issue that Walker voters are now saying they don’t care about either. And like their candidate, they’re unashamed of that.
This is a major, even defining difference between Democrats, who might not vote for you if they disagree on a single issue — Medicare for All, for example — and Republicans, whose loyalty to the team is so much more important than not just any one position, but all of them put together.
Both of these approaches have drawbacks: No willingness to compromise means no wins, and thus no shot at implementing anything you care about. But no limits on what you’ll accept from a fellow tribe member means I’m not sure what you really do care about. Other than winning, of course.
