Herschel Walker symbolizes the GOP's continued descent into lies, grift, expediency, and cynicism
In Georgia, the likely Republican challenger to take on the sitting Democratic Senator, Raphael Warnock, is a local sports legend — a national NCAA FB champion, a Heisman Trophy winner, and an NFLer with 99% name recognition in the state, Herschel Walker. Despite the reputation that “jocks” are dumb, being an ex-footballer is no bar to a successful political career. In the 1990s, former award-winning NFL quarterback Jack Kemp, after 18 years in the US House, was George H.W. Bush’s HUD Secretary and Bob Dole’s 1996 VP running mate. But Walker and Kemp are very different men.
Kemp was an inordinately well-read man — especially in supply-side economics and libertarian political philosophy. (Although you could argue his adherence to Ayn Rand’s ill-argued ideology of “objectivism” is the sign of an intellect that fell short of full maturity). He was an evangelical who, by all accounts, led a Christian life. He was a fierce critic of racism and argued for federal programs to reduce urban poverty. While an unabashed conservative, he kept the soulless hypocritical misdirection of Gingrich’s “Contract with America” at arm’s length. And in 1995, he declared himself unimpressed with the GOP’s policies. (If he thought they were dismal then, what would he have thought today? But I get ahead of myself.)
Returning to the present, we should consider how Walker meshes with the current Republican ethos. The answer is very well. Although the national party is deeply worried Walker is a flawed candidate whose candidacy makes retaking a traditionally conservative seat less likely, the base does not give a shit. Trump has endorsed him. And Walker has a commanding lead in the polls with 66%. His closest competitor, Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, is at 7%. And the primary is this Tuesday.
So why is the Republican brain trust concerned? Because Walker appears to be a low-IQ fantasist with anger management issues. Here is a list of Walker’s deeds and claims compiled by Jim Souhan of the Minnesota Star Tribune from an article by John Rosengren in an in-depth article for the Washington Post.
Walker asked why, if humans evolved from apes, apes still exist.
He claimed to invent a mist that destroys COVID.
On a Daily Caller podcast, when asked whether he would have voted for the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that had just passed, Walker said, "Until I can see all of the facts, you can't answer the question."
He said that civil rights hero John Lewis' name should not be attached to a voting rights bill because "it doesn't fit what John Lewis stood for."
Walker was accused by his former wife, Cindy, of holding a gun to her head several times, and once holding a straight razor to her throat.
In his memoir, Walker wrote that he fantasized about shooting a man who had not delivered a car to him on time. He wrote, specifically, "all I could think was how satisfying it would feel … the visceral enjoyment I'd get from seeing the small entry wound and the spray of brain tissue and blood — like a Fourth of July firework — exploding behind him."
After their divorce, Walker continued to threaten to shoot Cindy, according to court documents cited in the article.
This is not the picture of a stable man or a deep thinker. And the list is incomplete. It does not contain his lies about being his high school valedictorian or his claim to have graduated in the top 1% of his college class. When he did not graduate at all.
More importantly, we should add his fantastical business claims and misrepresentations. In public, Walker has adopted a Trumpian strategy of exaggeration, hyperbole, and lies. Which requires him to make corrections, backtrack or “clarify” statements when filling out documents or responding to lawsuits when it is a crime to lie. An article by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution outlines his difficulties. Here is a snippet,
“In a 2018 lawsuit against his company, H. Walker Enterprises, Walker backtracked from previous public statements he’d made about the poultry business and his involvement in the chicken processing plants. He acknowledged that his company, Renaissance Man Food Services, didn’t own any plants, but that he partnered with the company that actually owns the plants to sell his branded chicken products.”
He was forced to resort to weasel-wording. “I don’t mean to speak of ‘own’ in a technical sense,” he said in a declaration to the court.” (Bolding added)
Since the start of his business career, Walker has had problems. As the article goes on to say,
“Walker and various business partners have defaulted or fell behind in payments on at least eight loans totaling $9 million over the past two decades, according to an AJC review of hundreds of pages of court documents, Securities and Exchange Commission filings, and other public records that detail these financial issues.”
It gets worse. Like his backer Trump, Walker is eager to use the military for resume polishing — issuing grandiose promises of support for veterans — while contributing little to no money. Is it fraud? Probably. In an interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt last October, Walker said
“About 15 years ago, I started a program called Patriot Support.”
And in February he told Savannah TV station WTGS,
“People need to know I started a military program, a military program that treats (thousands) of soldiers a year.”
But according to an AP article,
“Corporate documents, court records, and Senate disclosures reviewed by The Associated Press tell a more complicated story. Together they present a portrait of a celebrity spokesman who overstated his role in a for-profit program that is alleged to have preyed upon veterans and service members while defrauding the government.”
But despite — or because — of his record of violence, anger, and dissembling, Walker enjoys support from two disparate communities. Rural Blacks from his hometown celebrate the local boy who made good and left. And conservative whites who see that, under the skin, Walker is no more than the usual lying, cheating, say-anything huckster and abuser who checks the correct, conservative Christian boxes. And whose deeds must be ignored or explained away because he is “one of us”.
Or, in other words, in one of history's ironic twists, Walker is now a “good old boy.”
as you say Pitt, he is the perfect candidate for the conservative right and it makes me all the more sad, the state our country is in, thank you