Herschel Walker has been in a state of self-immolation his entire campaign, but last week’s abortion revelation escalated the fire to a new level. Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan is understandably horrified at how ridiculous this campaign has become and well he should be. This is the most absurd senate race in the country. Duncan has authored a book called “GOP 2.0,” which plots a course back to traditional values. I expect many such books along those lines to appear as horrified conservatives realize the obvious, that the Trumpified GOP is a lost cause and if the actual conservative movement wants to continue forward it has to make some drastic changes and now.
Here’s a quote from his book: “I’m not the only conservative in America who wakes up wishing the past months were just a bad dream. I’m not the lone Republican who feels in my gut that our party is following the wrong path. And I’m not alone in believing there’s a better way forward.”
I daresay if he was being totally honest, he wouldn’t be saying “the past months” but rather “the past seven years.” If the man is the least grounded in reality, Trump coming down the escalator brought about all this GOP angst. Or, maybe he saw the advent of Trump as a good thing, until it went south. George Conway admitted the other day that he voted for Trump because he thought Trump would wake up and rise to the occasion and Conway said he came to realize that he was just projecting onto Trump. The rest of us saw the truth of Trump from the beginning. In any event, here’s what Duncan says about Herschel Walker, who is Trump’s Frankenstein’s monster, even as Trump is the GOP’s monster.
Duncan: We didn’t ask who was the best leader. We didn’t ask who had the best resume. Unfortunately, Republicans looked around to see who Trump supported and he was a famous football player and so he became our nominee and now we’re paying the price pic.twitter.com/ddaISLpyZ1
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 7, 2022
If you missed this hilarity a few days ago, you need to listen to it now. Walker has no idea who Geoff Duncan even is. He knows Duncan vaguely, ” Don’t he go on TV and talk a lot?” but when a reporter points out to him, “He’s still the Lt. Governor,” that sails right past Walker.
Reporter: The Lt Gov said the only reason you’re the nominee is because you scored a bunch of touchdowns Walker: Who was it
Reporter: Duncan
Walker: Oh, what is he doing now?
Reporter: He’s the Lt. Gov. pic.twitter.com/8m4UWumCj7— Acyn (@Acyn) October 6, 2022
The CTE is strong with this one. This is positively cringeworthy and we don’t blame Duncan for cringing. We are cringing, too. All America is cringing, looking at this.
Duncan had more to say in an op/ed he wrote for CNN:
Walker won his Senate primary not because of his political chops or policy proposals. He trounced his opponents because of his performance on the football field 40 years ago and his friendship with former President Donald Trump – neither of which are guaranteed tickets to victory anymore.
Everyone in America deserves due process, and Walker vehemently denied the Daily Beast report suggesting he had paid for a woman’s abortion in 2009 after the two conceived a child while they were dating. Walker has opposed abortion rights. He went so far as to threaten legal action against the publication as a recourse. But the impact in the court of public opinion was immediate and intense. Even influential conservative personality Erick Erickson described it as “probably a KO.”
Now, members of a nervous GOP infrastructure must hold their breath and hope Walker can weather the storm. To his political credit, Walker has faced other serious allegations, including domestic abuse, an exaggerated business career and an erratic personality. So far, he has had a Trump-esque Teflon quality of surviving scandals that would sink mere mortals. Walker’s latest test is his most serious, not just by its nature, but in its October timing.
So Duncan hopes that Walker can pull a Trump, which would mean that the seat would be regained, which is all that the GOP cares about? Evidently so, because that’s all he has to say. His next paragraph starts out talking about Brian Kemp and his race. It’s amusing, how on the one hand, Duncan preaches about how unqualified and ridiculous a candidate Walker is, but on the other hand, if, Dear God IF, he can just pull off a Trump pussy-gate number, then he will survive and go on to win the senate seat, idiot or not.
The cognitive dissonance here is such that I’m wondering if pondering it will give me the same sort of CTE that Walker has.
Pick a side, Mr. Duncan. Do you want to get some qualified candidates on the ballot, and certainly that is a good thing, or do you want to hope and pray that Walker manages to pull a rabbit out of a hat like Trump did?
He says in his book, “GOP 2.0 is not a new party – it’s a better direction for our Republican Party.” Sell the better direction to Josh Hawley, or Ted Cruz, or Greg Abbott, or any number of GOPers we could name. Because one thing is for sure: if the GOP remains fragmented like it is, it’s not going anywhere positive. It will just continue to devolve into Trumpian madness, and take democracy down the tubes with it.
Walker, like Tuberville and the former guy, is someone voters know from watching television. Actual qualifications don’t even make it to their minds.
Being a football star might not be a guarantee anymore, but this is still the south we are talking about and college football is king in a state like GA. So Walker has been and remains in a “first and goal from the 1-yard line” situation with an all-pro line blocking for him and facing a defense filled with second stringers subbed in because of injuries – from the last place team in the league.
The GOP needed a black guy with universal name recognition in Georgia AND an insanely huge chunk of “heroism” and no type of heroism rates higher in some of these southern states like success on the football field for a big name university. Walker and his issues, including the fact that after college he never lived in his home state again (before becoming a Senate candidate) was right out of GOP central casting to take on Warnock. Football players, especially at the big schools have always been given all manner of breaks from the police and the football loving public and not just in the south although the phenomenon is particularly virulent there. The same is true with other athletes in other sports of course, but football, and in particular college football in the south are at a whole different level of “look the other way.”
I won’t believe Warnock has won re-election until the votes are counted. I still say a LOT of Georgians are going to vote for Walker, including a lot of independent white folks (not just guys either) due SOLELY to his having played for the Georgia Bulldogs, and both won a Heisman and led them to a national championship forty years ago. It sucks, but that’s the reality. He still has a quite legitimate chance to pull this off.
Within my lifetime it was decided that grown men who play children’s games should make obscene amounts of money. One of the more asinine things about our society (and others) is paying people to play games. Truly mindless. I wonder just how further advanced we as a country/planet would be were we to give scholarships to people wanting to, now wait for it, study so they can join a profession and make a difference for the inhabitants of this planet instead of wasting space with idiots who get nothing educational from their college experience but sure can make a lot of money playing their little ball games. Ball games mind you that contribute nothing of worth to society but sure as shit make their owners wealthier.
WTF is wrong with this country?
Answer: every goddamn thing. Name ur poison.
The media. That’s what makes the US a mass shooting capital but Canada is ok. It’s the media. It’s why people in Canada put humanity first and the US doesn’t put humanity on the list of top 100 priorities. The media deliberately terrorizes the populace. From local networks keeping people scared about hurricanes/tornados/v blizzards in order to Jack up advertising rates during the weather segment to Fox News radicalizing the less stable RWers. The media doesnt do this anywhere else. Even Piers Morgan rolls his eyes at the Trump election fraud crap. White Supremacists outside the US find Fox News to have ZERO redeeming qualities and thus, it’s not on offer outside the US anymore. White supremacists outside the US are aware climate change is real too. ‘Fox News watchers are the only people on the planet who think …..’. a huge list of things….climate change, Trump being a smart, good businessman, flat earth, guns, Putins good….It’s a REALLY long list. I think getting Fox News off the air would actually do nearly as much for stopping mass shootings as outlawing assault rifles.