Murdock Tells Us What Trump Cost the GOP

Or: When a Call to Arms Amounts to an Early Post-Mortem

Governor Brian Kemp was primaried by a Trump-backed candidate, but won reelection in Georgia by over seven percent. Herschel Walker lost a runoff. (Image by the Office of U.S. Senator David Perdue, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.)

Even if I were the type to stay up for election results -- I am not -- I am pretty sure I could have slept through reporting on the Georgia runoff, which pitted a leftist clergyman against an empty suit.

Candidate quality matters, Republicans who say But, but, ... Fetterman won! to the contrary. I will not stoop to trying to argue about which of a snake-oil salesman (Oz) or a loony-lefty stroke victim (Fetterman) is "preferable." Ditto for whether a leftist pastor (Warnock), or a multiply-concussed, anti-abortion philanderer (Walker) is a "better" or even "less bad" candidate.

They were all atrocious, and were all easily beatable -- unless running against other low-quality candidates.

Instead, I'll let a conservative columnist do the talking for me.

The very fact that Deroy Murdock felt the need to write a column titled "Republicans Should Walk Hard for Herschel and a 50/50 Senate," just about says it all.

The piece goes into detail about why a 50-50 Senate with the Vice President's tiebreaking vote giving the Democrats a majority is preferable to a 51-49 Senate.

He's right about that, but he should think deeply about why he's having to talk about it in the first place.

First of all, that's thin gruel to even just to motivate casting a ballot.

Second, Walker is the last of the handful of awful Senate candidates Donald Trump backed in a midterm election the Republicans should have won handily. Set aside the fact that Trump effectively turned the election from Biden's midterm into a second one for himself by making the election about himself: Trump had already cost his party several chances to achieve 50-50, such as by backing the snake oil salesman.

Murdock's column should be reframed in hindsight: The increased power of an outright majority over 50-50 is what Trump has already cost the GOP: Republicans should be angry at Trump.

If you're basically saying Hey! He may be a brain-damaged kook, but he'll get us to 50-50, you're already playing damage control.

Rather than carrying water for Trump, Murdock and lots of other conservatives should realize that Trump is causing their party to lose, and make that abundantly clear to their readers.

Then they should and could very soon start talking about a better alternative that voters could get excited about, instead.

-- CAV