Post-Walker Recriminations: 'If We Don’t Take Our Medicine Here, It’s Our Fault'
Republicans furious after Georgia Senate loss
Republicans and other prominent figures among the right wing are livid — and pointing fingers — after problematic Senate candidate Herschel Walker lost his run-off election Tuesday.
Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated challenger Walker in a Georgia runoff election Tuesday, ensuring Democrats an outright majority in the Senate for the rest of President Biden’s term and helping cap an underwhelming midterm cycle for the GOP in the last major vote of the year.
The loss by Walker — a one-time Georgia football star who more recently saw a campaign plagued by substantiated allegations that the anti-abortion Walker paid for girlfriends to abort, often barely intelligible rhetoric and other problems — has left those on the political right demoralized and angry.
Many are continuing the new pattern emerging since disappointing results for the right last month: blame their one-time savior and God, Donald Trump. (As with many others who lost this year, Trump personally recruited Walker into the race.)
“To me, it never felt like the Senate Republicans wanted this guy in office. He was a Trump pick, they didn’t like that. They probably like him as a person — Herschel as a person — but there was not the intensity on the part of the Republicans as there was on the part of Democrats,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham said on her program Tuesday evening. “I felt it and you felt it, but we don’t change anything. We have the same people in place in leadership, same people in place apparently at the [Republican National Committee], perhaps that’s not changing. We just keep doing the same thing over and over again. I am pissed tonight, frankly. Go ahead. I'm mad.”
Georgia's Republican lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, has his own ideas about the Walker loss — particularly given that Walker performed so much worse than Georgia Gov Brian Kemp (R).
“If you are a Republican, you are disappointed. And the only way to explain this is candidate quality, right? That’s the only way to explain it with 9-plus point delta between Brian Kemp's margin and where it looks like Herschel Walker will finish,” Duncan said. “So, candidate quality does matter. Look, we’ve got a lot of work to do. I think Americans wake up all over this country worried about two things: the direction of — or Republicans wake up worried about two things: who’s going to take a lead in the party, and what’s the economy going to do? People are going to be scared to death tomorrow to lose their job and they don’t know where the Republican Party is headed.
“We need a leader to show up, big time. We need a once-in-a-generation leader to show up that actually understands conservatism, who actually understands the values and the outcomes of making conservative decisions, and truly challenge Joe Biden in '24. If we don’t take our medicine here, it’s our fault,” Duncan added.
Alyssa Farah Griffin, who once worked for Trump in the White House but since has emerged as a critic and a television personality, points her finger squarely at her former boss.
“Once again, Donald Trump has cost my party Senate seats. I was advising these same Georgia runoffs in 2020 when he lost those seats by touting the election lies, when it was [Republican Sens David] Purdue and Kelly Loeffler. Once again, he put his hand on the scale and put up a candidate who was highly unqualified, Herschel Walker, to be in the U.S. Senate.
“So now we’re in a position where we have to come around and realize we’re losing under him. The fact that in Biden’s economy, how poorly the country is doing, the fact that by and large, voters right, left, and center say we’re on the wrong trajectory, yet they’re not voting for change, that since 1934 that they have not actually had an incumbent not lose seats in the Senate, that is an indictment of the Republican Party. We need to wake up because we are losing the moment,” she added.
Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said that Republicans need to adapt and modernize some of their own methods.
"Look, I mean, you have to play the game by the rules that are existing. That means, for example, if you want Generation Z voters, you have to be on TikTok even if, in fact, in the long run we may abolish TikTok as a Chinese communist device. It means that you have to recognize early voting. It doesn’t do Republicans any good to save their TV money until October if they've had a third of the vote coming in September,” Gingrich said in an on-camera appearance on Fox News. “So, if people are going to have early voting, the huge advantage of early voting is unless you know who to focus on because they haven't voted yet — let me just point out, Democrats focus on elections, Republicans focus on campaigns.
“Democratic consultants are paid to win elections, Republican consultants are paid to buy TV ads for campaigns. Very different models,” the former Georgia congressman added. “And as I've indicated in a newsletter that's coming out tomorrow, we need to really rethink from the ground up — not just at the surface, but from the ground up — about how far the Republican doctrine is out of touch with reality.”
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