I went to breakfast with Herschel Walker last year after he secured the GOP nomination but before the general election. I knew after leaving that Herschel had no chance of beating Warnock. In his defense, Walker surrounded himself with some of the best people in politics and improved as a candidate as the campaign progressed. However, Herschel Walker was a deeply flawed candidate on a myriad of fronts and Republican primary voters didn’t seem to care. Similarly flawed candidates like Kari Lake in Arizona or just this week, Dan Kelly in Wisconsin, flushed away winnable seats by singularly focusing on the purity of winning the primary without the hassle of broadening the base in the general.
Well, I shall consider it completely impossible for a republican to win if we are going to see voters choose the worst of the worst of democrat candidates over what you call low quality republicans. Maybe Walker wasn't the best, but Warnock was extremely horrible. So voters prefer extremely horrible to "not the best"? Totally disagree with you about Kari Lake. She is really good. Oz seemed pretty mediocre, but he wasn't a disabled stroke victim. Voters prefer someone with a permanent disability that prevents them from speaking, thinking or acting without assistance? So in essence, the conclusion is that voters don't have the sense to come in out of the rain, let alone vote for the better candidate even it isn't the one they would have preferred.
Agree with you on Herschel Walker. 10000% disagree with you on Kari Lake. Really, you say that Lake is a low-quality candidate? She wipes the floor with Kati Homes... who frankly hid in her home the entire campaign. Of course you are on that establishment Republican track noting that Kari is an "election denier" and that is why she lost... ignoring the abortion issue and the massive enraged female vote that came out.
This Wisconsin failure of the GOP again has the chronic losing GOP establishment blaming it on election denying... ignoring the abortion issue... ignoring the giant Democrat-government-media and big tech collusion thumb on scale... ignoring that they, the establishment GOP, must not have an appealing platform or candidates.
Democrats must just be giddy with their ability to get the GOP to keep fighting over Trump while they take complete power.
Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney were all bad candidates.
Dole's campaign was, I'm Bob Dole.
I watched the McCain/Obama debates. He simply could not connect to the voters like Obama did.
Romney has been on both sides of every issue.
I think 2016 was a unique inflection point brought on by 9/11, the great recession, 8 years of Obama, and 8 years of Republicans doing nothing under Obama.
Trump was the street brawler to counter the status quo. Americans were tired from the last 15 years so f it, this town needs an enema.
But something didn't work out as expected. Trump never assumed the comportment of a U.S. President. He was stuck in perpetual campaign mode, forever acting like candidate Trump, and not President Trump.
He was objectively not the best candidate in 2016, just better than Hillary, maybe any Democrat.
The Republicans have a deep bench, most are better than Trump. And Biden is getting primaried.
I am excited about the up and coming Republicans. But even DeSantis is connected with the Bush establishment. These politicians all need lots of money. They get the money and it obligates them to accept the establishment edits that secure the status quo.
You asked a question about what is the establishment. It is the collection of voters and politicians in which the current system is configured well enough to ensure them a nice comfortable upper-class life and they don't want that fucked with except to get them more. The are good with change that gets them more... even if it results in less for others. They are politically supported by constituent groups that want money from government... or policies that help them in their efforts to make and accumulate more money or power or a false sense of life meaning. Everyone else is what you probably describe as MAGA.
Our Federal government and the politics around it has become more like a sophisticated mafia crime syndicate backed by thousands of attorneys and big corporatist money. It is the establishment. Liz Cheney was worth $6 million when she entered office, and $46 million when she left 8 years later. Yeah, she just got lucky in the market for that return.
Your hung up the "establishment". I want to abolish the Dept of Education tomorrow. Not going to happen. So I advocate school choice, and state/local control. One day the DoEd will be obsolete.
I think we do need to stop talking about 2020 and appeal to the common sense in hopefully most Americans that the current administration is a disaster. Don’t forget about 2020, just stop talking about it and work towards the future - while strengthening voting security. I agree with you that the thumb of big tech and the media is on the scale. So conservatives have to be smarter. I think Kari Lake, for instance had a tone of disdain for those who couldn’t see what she saw. Instead of being smarmy towards them, she needed to possibly more gently cajole voters to vote for her. We’ll never have the media so we need to win hearts and scolding rarely does.
This is your mistake. You are comparing the Republican and Democrat candidates. It is also objectively true that Oz was the only logical candidate after Fetterman's stroke, yet we have now have a Senator who is more cognitively impaired than Biden.
You need to be comparing Republican candidates with alternative Republican candidates. Compare apples to apples.
The Republican candidate is not the best candidate because their opponent is a Democrat. They need to be the best possible Republican candidate of potential Republican candidates.
I am dumbfounded by this post. We have primaries and then we have a general election. Arizona Republicans selected Kari Lake in the primary. She is really quite awesome. I would put her up against any Democrat in any debate and she would "wipe the floor" with them.
Ask yourself how did John Fetterman win given his health issues? You blame it on dislike of Trump and Oz's connection to Trump. I think that is an idiotic and lazy assessment. Oz was also connected to Oprah. Oz was, is, a complete moderate Republican.
Are you saying that a good Republican candidate has to be more Democrat to be a "quality" candidate? The modern Democrat standard is extreme by all good Republican standards.
A good candidate also has to connect with the voters. Oz in PA was like a New Yorker with that grinding, annoying, Brooklyn accent campaigning in South Carolina. They can say all the right words, no one is going to hear them. The term carpetbagger comes to mind.
Yeah. I watched him talking about inflation walking around a grocery store saying that the ingredients for his Crudités would be too expensive. Hey Oz... it is a vegi tray. Or better yet, head to the deli meats and frozen prepared food section! Know your damn constituents.
Wasn't the story that the Democrats voted for him in the primaries because their analysis was that he would be unappealing to the state voters?
This then gets back to my point that the GOP, RNC is feckless and broken in competing with the strategy and ground game of Democrats. It might be the candidate, but if the GOP cannot even control the primary outcome over Democrat malfeasance, the GOP isn't worthy of winning.
And that is a legit issue. Obama was the first to effectively use social media and hired consultants on salarie. He out played the Republicans.
People like you and me are going to vote Republican. Others are going to vote Democrat
Apparently there are others who vote based on looks, how well they speak, their social media posts. I don't get it, but I know knocking on doors works.
It was the Nixon vs Kennedy contest where the first TV debate really turned national politics into a screen media game. Nixon perspired and Kennedy looked cool, calm and attractive. Once it went to the screen, many voters cannot effectively discern the true capability of the candidate vs the model of what they would expect in a TV series or movie. I don’t get it either except for low cognitive ability voters… but I know many highly educated that do the same. It seems that the Democrats are always a step ahead of the Republicans on understanding this screen media power and exploiting the media game. I use this analogy… what if Coke started running TV media bits showing scenes of people getting sick and dying after drinking Pepsi. And Pepsi did not do the same to Coke, and really did not even effectively counter with media bits demonstrating the safety and great taste of Pepsi.
To influence consumers to buy and voters to vote, there is branding. Branding can be positive or negative. Product companies in general, with some exception, never go negative. That used to be the favored approach for political campaigns too… explain the platform… the ideas… the benefits… the problems being solved, etc. However, it was really Obama that tweaked the Democrats to go mostly negative… negative branding their opponents vs positive branding themselves. Republicans have been very slow to recognize that this strategy is more effective at gaining votes. Democrats probably adopted this approach out of necessity as their ideas sucked and were proven a liability… tending to result in a spiral down in life quality for the general public.
Now, I think there is a level of exhaustion with the negative branding and so any Reagan style candidate would immediately attract a lot of voters. But campaigns are long and the negative attacks repeated stick in the minds of voters. Democrats know this and exploit it. Theirs is a strategy to character assassinate everyone that is a threat.
I was just thinking how Joe Biden could have been negative branded and Trump positive branded based on the demonstrated character and lives of their children. Republicans won’t go there for some reason, but Democrats are full on committed to exploiting their media spin machine to paint Trump and his children as dirty villains. It works so well that many Republicans have bought into it. Meanwhile Ashly Biden in her journal that she forgot at her rehab stay writes that her problems might be related to the fact that she took inappropriate showers with her dad.
So Eric - again, which is it? You claimed on Tuesday that Bragg's indictment was going to hand the 2024 Presidential election to Trump, and you were going to laugh at the Democrats and say, "I told you so." Yesterday, you were in a tizzy about how it makes no sense to nominate Trump and today you double-down by saying candidate quality matters. I concur with you on candidate quality and it making no sense to nominate Trump; so, when are you going to walk back your Tuesday comments?
Why aren't we focusing on the storming of the Tennessee Capital. Why aren't we showing how the administration lied about... everything.
It is TIRING at this point to keep rehashing this point.
The point is that candidates matter but it also matters that Soros contributed to the campaigns of those "Trump endorsed" candidates. And many, as much as 200k dem voters crossed the aisle on primary day to vote for the radical candidate.
But ok, lets talk about that. If candidates REALLY matters then why did the dem candidates win? Because Warnock and the wackjob in Wisconsin were also election deniers in 2016 and a million times more radical and crazy than Walker or the other trump candidates. What about them? They get a pass? Right of course they do because the media has you believe that no matter the candidate the dem is always best.
Your blaming trump for the media blaming trump. Every candidate is going to have some measure of trump hanging around their neck.
Our job is not ONLY to pick a good candidate but one not endorsed by Trump. While the dems just pick anyone and throw them up there even if they were a drug dealer or danced around in a dress on stage screaming how they will take your kids away. Sounds like an unattainable standard to me.
Not choosing a candidate solely based on a trump endorsement without realizing the absolute mortal danger of voting for a democrat is like choosing between a terrible tasting onion sandwich or a bottle of cyanide. Obviously the poison being the democrat.
So please explain this logic. Two candidates one a dem the other a trump endorsed republican.
Someone stands there and says. "I can't stand mean tweets, loud mouthed bullyish rhetoric. Im just going to vote for the democrat who supports drag queens at my kids school and boys competing against my daughter in her sports. Yeah that's what I'll do."
( blank stare)
The logic in that is maddening. Sure candidates matter but so do educated and smart voters and so does the MEDIA.
The solution is NOT to go out and pick moderate middle of the road Rhino's.
When the electorate realizes that even a candidate who was a former football player who made mistakes 20 years ago is better than any democrat any day, and twice on Sunday. Maybe we have hope. But realize that until that happens what happened in WI and other states will continue to happen. Until Dem candidates are treated with the same harsh scrutiny and past transgressions exposed that any republican is. We will continue to lose.
ChazAtl, I think what we have to do is pick a conservative candidate, not a RINO, but one smart enough and eloquent enough, to explain conservative positions in depth and without malice. For instance, MTG got on 60 minutes the other day and called democrats pedophiles because of the far left’s support for teaching LGTB stuff to wee kids. That’s sick, but using a forum like 60 minutes to say what she said needlessly slammed many dems who’d have agreed with her if she expressed herself passionately but with a desire to compel her audience to agree with her. That tendency to knee-jerk attack, as Kari Lake and Donald Trump do, might enliven their hard base, but turns the stomach of moderate dems, independents, and many republicans as well. Like Erick said in his video, I want to win in 2024. We need a Reaganesque candidate.
I do understand what you are saying. I voted for Herschel with that thought in mind...I just needed him to vote ‘no’ to whatever Chuck Schumer came up with. But Herschel could barely string a sentence together. I wanted another primary contender to win but he didn’t, so, Herschel. But independents and moderate dems don’t see the danger I think we both see. They have to be appealed to. We need a strong, firm, witty, disarming conservative for our nominee in 2024.
I doubt Reagan himself could win the Republican nomination in today's insane political atmosphere. If it comes down to those two old farts again a lot of people will just stay home.
It IS tiring to keep rehashing this point. Unfortunately, a lot of emotionally-driven GOP voters whose idea of political engagement is to double down on "owning the libs" and raging about stolen elections apparently still haven't gotten the point, that their obsession is the actual reason their candidates are losing. So until people finally get it, someone has to keep saying it. I agree with Erick: I want to win.
Republican voters would prefer to lose but remain ideologically pure...rather than compromise.
Well, I shall consider it completely impossible for a republican to win if we are going to see voters choose the worst of the worst of democrat candidates over what you call low quality republicans. Maybe Walker wasn't the best, but Warnock was extremely horrible. So voters prefer extremely horrible to "not the best"? Totally disagree with you about Kari Lake. She is really good. Oz seemed pretty mediocre, but he wasn't a disabled stroke victim. Voters prefer someone with a permanent disability that prevents them from speaking, thinking or acting without assistance? So in essence, the conclusion is that voters don't have the sense to come in out of the rain, let alone vote for the better candidate even it isn't the one they would have preferred.
Agree with you on Herschel Walker. 10000% disagree with you on Kari Lake. Really, you say that Lake is a low-quality candidate? She wipes the floor with Kati Homes... who frankly hid in her home the entire campaign. Of course you are on that establishment Republican track noting that Kari is an "election denier" and that is why she lost... ignoring the abortion issue and the massive enraged female vote that came out.
This Wisconsin failure of the GOP again has the chronic losing GOP establishment blaming it on election denying... ignoring the abortion issue... ignoring the giant Democrat-government-media and big tech collusion thumb on scale... ignoring that they, the establishment GOP, must not have an appealing platform or candidates.
Democrats must just be giddy with their ability to get the GOP to keep fighting over Trump while they take complete power.
Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney were all bad candidates.
Dole's campaign was, I'm Bob Dole.
I watched the McCain/Obama debates. He simply could not connect to the voters like Obama did.
Romney has been on both sides of every issue.
I think 2016 was a unique inflection point brought on by 9/11, the great recession, 8 years of Obama, and 8 years of Republicans doing nothing under Obama.
Trump was the street brawler to counter the status quo. Americans were tired from the last 15 years so f it, this town needs an enema.
But something didn't work out as expected. Trump never assumed the comportment of a U.S. President. He was stuck in perpetual campaign mode, forever acting like candidate Trump, and not President Trump.
He was objectively not the best candidate in 2016, just better than Hillary, maybe any Democrat.
The Republicans have a deep bench, most are better than Trump. And Biden is getting primaried.
I am excited about the up and coming Republicans. But even DeSantis is connected with the Bush establishment. These politicians all need lots of money. They get the money and it obligates them to accept the establishment edits that secure the status quo.
You asked a question about what is the establishment. It is the collection of voters and politicians in which the current system is configured well enough to ensure them a nice comfortable upper-class life and they don't want that fucked with except to get them more. The are good with change that gets them more... even if it results in less for others. They are politically supported by constituent groups that want money from government... or policies that help them in their efforts to make and accumulate more money or power or a false sense of life meaning. Everyone else is what you probably describe as MAGA.
Our Federal government and the politics around it has become more like a sophisticated mafia crime syndicate backed by thousands of attorneys and big corporatist money. It is the establishment. Liz Cheney was worth $6 million when she entered office, and $46 million when she left 8 years later. Yeah, she just got lucky in the market for that return.
Your hung up the "establishment". I want to abolish the Dept of Education tomorrow. Not going to happen. So I advocate school choice, and state/local control. One day the DoEd will be obsolete.
I think we do need to stop talking about 2020 and appeal to the common sense in hopefully most Americans that the current administration is a disaster. Don’t forget about 2020, just stop talking about it and work towards the future - while strengthening voting security. I agree with you that the thumb of big tech and the media is on the scale. So conservatives have to be smarter. I think Kari Lake, for instance had a tone of disdain for those who couldn’t see what she saw. Instead of being smarmy towards them, she needed to possibly more gently cajole voters to vote for her. We’ll never have the media so we need to win hearts and scolding rarely does.
"Kari Lake... wipes the floor with Kati Homes."
This is your mistake. You are comparing the Republican and Democrat candidates. It is also objectively true that Oz was the only logical candidate after Fetterman's stroke, yet we have now have a Senator who is more cognitively impaired than Biden.
You need to be comparing Republican candidates with alternative Republican candidates. Compare apples to apples.
The Republican candidate is not the best candidate because their opponent is a Democrat. They need to be the best possible Republican candidate of potential Republican candidates.
I am dumbfounded by this post. We have primaries and then we have a general election. Arizona Republicans selected Kari Lake in the primary. She is really quite awesome. I would put her up against any Democrat in any debate and she would "wipe the floor" with them.
Ask yourself how did John Fetterman win given his health issues? You blame it on dislike of Trump and Oz's connection to Trump. I think that is an idiotic and lazy assessment. Oz was also connected to Oprah. Oz was, is, a complete moderate Republican.
Are you saying that a good Republican candidate has to be more Democrat to be a "quality" candidate? The modern Democrat standard is extreme by all good Republican standards.
A good candidate also has to connect with the voters. Oz in PA was like a New Yorker with that grinding, annoying, Brooklyn accent campaigning in South Carolina. They can say all the right words, no one is going to hear them. The term carpetbagger comes to mind.
Yeah. I watched him talking about inflation walking around a grocery store saying that the ingredients for his Crudités would be too expensive. Hey Oz... it is a vegi tray. Or better yet, head to the deli meats and frozen prepared food section! Know your damn constituents.
Wasn't the story that the Democrats voted for him in the primaries because their analysis was that he would be unappealing to the state voters?
This then gets back to my point that the GOP, RNC is feckless and broken in competing with the strategy and ground game of Democrats. It might be the candidate, but if the GOP cannot even control the primary outcome over Democrat malfeasance, the GOP isn't worthy of winning.
And that is a legit issue. Obama was the first to effectively use social media and hired consultants on salarie. He out played the Republicans.
People like you and me are going to vote Republican. Others are going to vote Democrat
Apparently there are others who vote based on looks, how well they speak, their social media posts. I don't get it, but I know knocking on doors works.
It was the Nixon vs Kennedy contest where the first TV debate really turned national politics into a screen media game. Nixon perspired and Kennedy looked cool, calm and attractive. Once it went to the screen, many voters cannot effectively discern the true capability of the candidate vs the model of what they would expect in a TV series or movie. I don’t get it either except for low cognitive ability voters… but I know many highly educated that do the same. It seems that the Democrats are always a step ahead of the Republicans on understanding this screen media power and exploiting the media game. I use this analogy… what if Coke started running TV media bits showing scenes of people getting sick and dying after drinking Pepsi. And Pepsi did not do the same to Coke, and really did not even effectively counter with media bits demonstrating the safety and great taste of Pepsi.
To influence consumers to buy and voters to vote, there is branding. Branding can be positive or negative. Product companies in general, with some exception, never go negative. That used to be the favored approach for political campaigns too… explain the platform… the ideas… the benefits… the problems being solved, etc. However, it was really Obama that tweaked the Democrats to go mostly negative… negative branding their opponents vs positive branding themselves. Republicans have been very slow to recognize that this strategy is more effective at gaining votes. Democrats probably adopted this approach out of necessity as their ideas sucked and were proven a liability… tending to result in a spiral down in life quality for the general public.
Now, I think there is a level of exhaustion with the negative branding and so any Reagan style candidate would immediately attract a lot of voters. But campaigns are long and the negative attacks repeated stick in the minds of voters. Democrats know this and exploit it. Theirs is a strategy to character assassinate everyone that is a threat.
I was just thinking how Joe Biden could have been negative branded and Trump positive branded based on the demonstrated character and lives of their children. Republicans won’t go there for some reason, but Democrats are full on committed to exploiting their media spin machine to paint Trump and his children as dirty villains. It works so well that many Republicans have bought into it. Meanwhile Ashly Biden in her journal that she forgot at her rehab stay writes that her problems might be related to the fact that she took inappropriate showers with her dad.
And *your* MAGA candidates keep losing.
So Eric - again, which is it? You claimed on Tuesday that Bragg's indictment was going to hand the 2024 Presidential election to Trump, and you were going to laugh at the Democrats and say, "I told you so." Yesterday, you were in a tizzy about how it makes no sense to nominate Trump and today you double-down by saying candidate quality matters. I concur with you on candidate quality and it making no sense to nominate Trump; so, when are you going to walk back your Tuesday comments?
We get it. Thanks appreciate it. Move on.
Why aren't we focusing on the storming of the Tennessee Capital. Why aren't we showing how the administration lied about... everything.
It is TIRING at this point to keep rehashing this point.
The point is that candidates matter but it also matters that Soros contributed to the campaigns of those "Trump endorsed" candidates. And many, as much as 200k dem voters crossed the aisle on primary day to vote for the radical candidate.
But ok, lets talk about that. If candidates REALLY matters then why did the dem candidates win? Because Warnock and the wackjob in Wisconsin were also election deniers in 2016 and a million times more radical and crazy than Walker or the other trump candidates. What about them? They get a pass? Right of course they do because the media has you believe that no matter the candidate the dem is always best.
Your blaming trump for the media blaming trump. Every candidate is going to have some measure of trump hanging around their neck.
Our job is not ONLY to pick a good candidate but one not endorsed by Trump. While the dems just pick anyone and throw them up there even if they were a drug dealer or danced around in a dress on stage screaming how they will take your kids away. Sounds like an unattainable standard to me.
Not choosing a candidate solely based on a trump endorsement without realizing the absolute mortal danger of voting for a democrat is like choosing between a terrible tasting onion sandwich or a bottle of cyanide. Obviously the poison being the democrat.
So please explain this logic. Two candidates one a dem the other a trump endorsed republican.
Someone stands there and says. "I can't stand mean tweets, loud mouthed bullyish rhetoric. Im just going to vote for the democrat who supports drag queens at my kids school and boys competing against my daughter in her sports. Yeah that's what I'll do."
( blank stare)
The logic in that is maddening. Sure candidates matter but so do educated and smart voters and so does the MEDIA.
The solution is NOT to go out and pick moderate middle of the road Rhino's.
When the electorate realizes that even a candidate who was a former football player who made mistakes 20 years ago is better than any democrat any day, and twice on Sunday. Maybe we have hope. But realize that until that happens what happened in WI and other states will continue to happen. Until Dem candidates are treated with the same harsh scrutiny and past transgressions exposed that any republican is. We will continue to lose.
Trump is not the problem nor is he a solution.
ChazAtl, I think what we have to do is pick a conservative candidate, not a RINO, but one smart enough and eloquent enough, to explain conservative positions in depth and without malice. For instance, MTG got on 60 minutes the other day and called democrats pedophiles because of the far left’s support for teaching LGTB stuff to wee kids. That’s sick, but using a forum like 60 minutes to say what she said needlessly slammed many dems who’d have agreed with her if she expressed herself passionately but with a desire to compel her audience to agree with her. That tendency to knee-jerk attack, as Kari Lake and Donald Trump do, might enliven their hard base, but turns the stomach of moderate dems, independents, and many republicans as well. Like Erick said in his video, I want to win in 2024. We need a Reaganesque candidate.
Here’s where I am at.
I get what your saying. Candidates matter whatever.
Biden just wrote up and changed Title 9 so boys can play in girls sports.
When someone walks into a voting booth and decides to vote for a democrat strictly because they are endorsed by trump.
That is a mentally I’ll person and a complete danger to our country. And Bidens actions today prove that.
This is not just a candidate problem this is a voter and media problem because when that happens we are all at risk.
In essence who cares who the republican candidate was endorsed by. Vote for them. Because the alternative is certain death.
I do understand what you are saying. I voted for Herschel with that thought in mind...I just needed him to vote ‘no’ to whatever Chuck Schumer came up with. But Herschel could barely string a sentence together. I wanted another primary contender to win but he didn’t, so, Herschel. But independents and moderate dems don’t see the danger I think we both see. They have to be appealed to. We need a strong, firm, witty, disarming conservative for our nominee in 2024.
I doubt Reagan himself could win the Republican nomination in today's insane political atmosphere. If it comes down to those two old farts again a lot of people will just stay home.
It IS tiring to keep rehashing this point. Unfortunately, a lot of emotionally-driven GOP voters whose idea of political engagement is to double down on "owning the libs" and raging about stolen elections apparently still haven't gotten the point, that their obsession is the actual reason their candidates are losing. So until people finally get it, someone has to keep saying it. I agree with Erick: I want to win.