How 'atavistic tribalism' is driving GOP support for ‘terrible candidate’ Herschel Walker: columnist
On Tuesday, November 6, a runoff election in Georgia will determine whether Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock wins a full six-year term in the U.S. Senate or is replaced by MAGA Republican challenger Herschel Walker. Georgia’s outgoing lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan, a conservative Republican, hasn’t been shy about criticizing Walker — who he described as “one of the worst Republican candidates in our party’s history” and someone he won’t be voting for.
But many well-known Republicans have been aggressively campaigning for Walker, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Even reelected Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who has famously pushed back against election denialism and Donald Trump’s Big Lie, is urging residents of the Peach State to vote for Walker. And ironically, far-right white evangelical fundamentalists have been rallying around Walker despite the fact that Warnock is an ordained Baptist minister.
According to liberal Washington Post opinion columnist Eugene Robinson, the fact that so many Republicans are campaigning for Walker despite his painfully obvious flaws is a glaring example of the “atavistic tribalism” that has overtaken the GOP.
READ MORE: 'Are you kidding me?' Howard Stern blasts Herschel Walker in profanity-filled rant
“How far has the Republican Party fallen into atavistic tribalism?” Robinson writes in his December 5 column. “Voters in Georgia are about to provide an answer. Woe to the nation if it’s the wrong one…. There is only the stark choice between Warnock, who has shown he is competent to be a U.S. senator, and Walker, who manifestly is not.”
Robinson continues, “It’s the rare moment when Republicans should be able to abstain from supporting a terrible candidate in good conscience, and in doing so restore a little self-respect and sanity to the national political process. If Walker wins, it will be because Republican voters decided that loyalty to party was more important than having effective representation in the Senate.”
Walker has faced one damning allegation after another during his campaign, from allegations of domestic violence to allegations that he impregnated two different women and encouraged both of them to have abortions — the same Walker who has proposed severe abortion bans even in cases of rape or incest.
Georgia residents, the columnist observes, are hardly unaware of “Walker’s shortcomings.”
READ MORE: 'Hijacked by the extremists': Democratic lawmaker sounds the alarm on new House GOP majority
“The NBC News exit poll from the November 8 election found that nearly two-thirds of Georgia voters believed Walker lacked good judgment, while fewer than half said the same thing about Warnock,” Robinson explains. “Why vote for someone with bad judgment to be a senator?.... And yet, this is a close race, according to the polling averages, which give Warnock a razor-thin lead within surveys’ margins of error…. Despite Walker’s stunning displays of incoherence, his many lies about his purported accomplishments, the credible allegations that he paid women with whom he had relationships to have abortions — despite all those things that once would have imploded a Democratic or Republican candidacy — he still has a chance of winning.”
Warnock received more votes than Walker in the November 8 election, but it’s been a close race. And because Walker’s lead was less than 50 percent, the election went to a runoff under Georgia’s election rules.
“In Warnock, (Georgia Republicans) have a senator with whom they might disagree, but who effectively represents Georgia’s interests on bread-and-butter issues, works across the aisle with Republicans such as Cruz and goes to the most conservative parts of the state to hear his constituents’ concerns,” Robinson argues. “In Walker, they have a sideshow character who once was a football star. If GOP voters choose the sideshow, it will be because for them — as for Kemp, Cruz, Graham and the rest of the party establishment — the ‘R’ after Walker’s name and the ‘D’ after Warnock’s are all that matter.”
