On the menu today: Maybe Georgia’s GOP Senate candidate, Herschel Walker, could survive a former girlfriend alleging that he paid for her abortion in 2009. We’ve seen October surprise scandals and accusations plenty of times before. But the abortion accusation — coupled with the candidate’s son, Christian Walker, accusing his father of running around with other women, threatening to kill members of his family, and being violent — will be exceptionally hard to overcome. This, unfortunately, is the kind of risk a party accepts when it chooses to nominate an unvetted first-time candidate to run for a key U.S. Senate seat. Meanwhile, there is good news for the GOP elsewhere, and there are tough questions to be answered about U.S. efforts to deter Russian nuclear aggression.
A Reminder to Vet Your Candidates
These are the sorts of risks you encounter when you nominate Senate candidates who have never run for office before. Herschel Walker — like his fellow GOP Senate candidates Mehmet Oz, J. D. Vance, Blake Masters, and the not-so-Trumpy Joe O’Dea as well as GOP gubernatorial nominees Kari Lake (Arizona), Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Arkansas), and Tudor Dixon (Michigan) — has never run for any office before.
Rookie candidates haven’t really had their backgrounds vetted the way experienced candidates have. And sometimes, right around this time of year, that lack of vetting becomes consequential. The Atlanta Journal Constitution published a piece this morning, saying:
But the one-two punch on Monday of a Daily Beast story that accused Walker of paying for his then-girlfriend’s abortion in 2009 coupled with his adult son’s stunning attacks on his father’s candidacy may pose the greatest threat yet to the Republican’s bid.
Conservative commentator Erick Erickson said the fallout is “probably a KO” for Walker’s midterm chances. Nicole Rodden, a former Republican House contender, blamed party leaders for backing a candidate who has “cost the GOP the US Senate for a second time.”
Walker reacted by condemning the Daily Beast report as a “flat-out lie” and said on Fox News he “never asked anyone to get an abortion, I never paid for an abortion.” His attorney has pledged to file a defamation lawsuit against the publication, which stands by the story.
The Republican and his allies had a more muted response toward his son Christian Walker’s claims that his father threatened to kill his family members and entered the race despite opposition from “every single one” of his relatives.
“I LOVE my son no matter what,” Walker tweeted.
Christian Walker tweeted last night:
I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father Herschel Walker stopped lying and making a mockery of us. You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence. Don’t care about someone who has a bad past and takes accountability. But how DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.’ You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you.
The Daily Beast says that Walker’s ex-girlfriend “supported these claims with a $575 receipt from the abortion clinic, a ‘get well’ card from Walker, and a bank deposit receipt that included an image of a signed $700 personal check from Walker.”
Walker appeared on Sean Hannity’s program last night; when asked if he knew the woman, Walker responded, “No idea, but it is a flat-out lie” and then he mentioned his campaign website. When Hannity asked if he’d sent the woman a $700 check and a get-well card, Walker responded, “I haven’t seen it, but you know, I can tell you, I sent out so many get well — sent so much anything, but I can tell you right now, I never asked anyone to get an abortion, I never paid for an abortion. That’s a lie.”
Hannity pressed further. “What about the $700 check? Is there anyone you can remember sending that much money to?”
Walker responded, “Well, I send money to a lot of people. And that’s what’s so funny. And let’s go back to my part, you know, I do scholarships for kids, I give money to people all the time, because I’m always helping people, because I believe in being generous. God has blessed me, and I want to bless others. I got into this race because I’m a Christian, I love the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Walker didn’t have much margin for error before these reports. After enjoying a small-but-consistent lead in late August and early September, the last three polls — Marist, CBS News, and Fox News — had Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock ahead by a few points. At first glance, the CBS News poll was the most ominous, as it put Warnock at 51 percent, just above the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. But it appears that that poll did not list Libertarian Chase Oliver as an option; it did list “someone else,” and not a single registered-voter respondent said “someone else,” which seems a little surprising.
But the point is, Walker had a decent shot at advancing to a high-stakes runoff with Warnock before these stories broke, and now it’s anyone’s guess.
A lot of Georgia Republicans will stick with Walker, as well as a lot of pro-lifers. They’ll conclude that a man who pledges to be a pro-life senator with a problematic past is a better option than a pastor who supports taxpayer-funded abortion. Lots of people hunger for a redemption story, and a more articulate candidate could lay out the details of the past encounter in a sympathetic way. (A better candidate would have leaked the details of a past scandal to a more friendly news institution, talked about the hard lessons and what he learned, how he became a better person, and then after a few days declare it old news.) Back in 1999, Donald Trump said in an interview, “I am very pro-choice.” He ran as a pro-lifer in 2016, and pro-lifers believed him.
Speaking of Donald Trump, a lot of Trump critics — and hoo-boy, has our frothing-at-the-mouth nutjob of a former president given his critics a ton of legitimate ammunition lately — will blame Trump for the Georgia Republican primary electorate nominating Walker. But as I noted back in April, Walker was, by far, the best-known and heretofore best-liked candidate in that state’s GOP Senate primary field. The other GOP Senate candidates were state agriculture commissioner Gary Black, former state representative Josh Clark, U.S. Air Force captain and entrepreneur Kelvin King, and former U.S. Navy SEAL and director of Intelligence Programs on the National Security Council Latham Saddler — all relative unknowns, and all drastically underfunded compared to Walker.
In the primary, Black came closest, with 13.3 percent to Walker’s 68.1 percent. Trump’s endorsement no doubt helped Walker, but he was a heavy favorite with or without Trump’s support. When you are arguably the greatest college-football player of all time, lead the University of Georgia Bulldogs to the national championship in 1980, and win the Heisman Trophy in 1982, a lot of Georgians will remain eternally grateful.
The Walker news will leave a lot of Republicans depressed, and it should leave them depressed. In this kind of political environment, with Biden’s approval rating being lousy in just about all of the key states, a bunch of nice, boring, generic Republicans would likely be enjoying solid leads over Raphael Warnock, Mark Kelly, Maggie Hassan, and maybe even John Fetterman. All Republicans needed to do to win big this midterm cycle was to be normal. Apparently, that was too much to ask.
Noam Blum asks a question that every Republican should contemplate: “If Trump’s only kingmaker skill is crowning primary winners who lose general elections, how much longer will Republicans continue to pretend that he’s vital to their party?”
Meanwhile, in the Rest of the Country . . .
The news is not all bad for the GOP, however. Very quietly, Republican gubernatorial candidates are starting to enjoy small-but-consistent polling leads in Wisconsin and Nevada. The fact that you’re not hearing anything about the Florida state government’s response to Hurricane Ian is a sign that the media can’t find any angle from which to attack Ron DeSantis. The incumbent Republican is on pace to win reelection over Charlie Crist by a very healthy margin by Florida , enjoying a high-single-digit lead over Crist.
Similarly quietly, Adam Laxalt might now be a slight favorite over incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada’s Senate race. J. D. Vance still looks like the safer bet in Ohio’s Senate race, as does Ted Budd in North Carolina’s Senate race. You don’t hear Democrats talking up the chances of Mandela Barnes against Ron Johnson in Wisconsin’s Senate race so much anymore.
Another two years of a 50-50 Senate.
I Liked It Better When the ‘Nuclear Option’ Meant Ditching the Filibuster
If, God forbid, Russia uses a nuclear weapon on Ukraine in the coming weeks or months, we will look back at the current moment and ask if we did enough to deter that awful outcome. I feel like we’re sleepwalking into another major-league crisis. Michael Brendan Dougherty and I see the world of foreign policy quite differently, but I think he accurately diagnosed the dynamic currently at work:
There is a pattern in the interplay between Washington and Moscow when it comes to the war in Ukraine. Washington draws a firm-ish line in the sand, hoping to deter Moscow. Moscow notices the hedging, and presses forward. Washington, suddenly now worried about what new precedents are being set by Russian action, scrambles to invest more in the conflict, and then draws another firm-ish line, effectively daring Moscow to cross it.
It’s a game of escalation by miscalculation.
Michael notes that Biden believes that a Russian nuclear strike can be deterred by threats of conventional-force strikes from NATO. This is a major change from past U.S. thinking, which believed that the potential threat of a U.S. nuclear counter-strike was necessary to deter the opponent’s first strike.
No one in their right mind wants to start a nuclear war, and few Americans want to get into a shooting war with Russia. But one of the ways you can deter another nation’s aggression is by threatening to escalate the stakes of the conflict to a level their leaders aren’t willing to lose.
So while we don’t want to threaten to use nuclear weapons . . . but getting Russia to believe we might use nuclear weapons may be one of our best tools to deter Russia from using a nuclear weapon or crossing other red lines (using chemical weapons, etc.). But if the Russians sense we’re bluffing, they may well call our bluff.
Our policy is a contradiction. From the beginning, Biden has been driven by two contrary impulses: the desire to punish Russia for its territorial and military aggression, and the desire to stay out of direct conflict and wishing the war had never started in the first place. Those two desires run in opposite directions.
Is Biden willing to impose the costs and risks that this project entails on Americans? The question demands an answer, because we’re rapidly approaching a point where he may no longer be able to conduct this war as if it were a small conflict with a power incapable of reaching us.
ADDENDUM: Unfortunately, Charlie Cooke really understands the dynamics of the media — including the dynamics here at NR.