The Democrats now have majority control of the Senate, including its committees. I want to be very clear here — Herschel Walker did not need Donald Trump to win the GOP primary. He is, after all, Herschel Walker. Herschel Walker did not lose because of Trump,
fachrissakes - all this verbiage over some insecure narcissistic jerk from NY? ENOUGH: we're done with Trump. If he won't go away on his own, somebody shoot him (preferably on 5th avenue)
I understand that Walker was far from the best candidate who made it extremely difficult for many Republicans to give him their vote. What I don't understand is how any Republican could vote for Warnock who also has many of his own undesirable issues. I would stay home before I would ever vote for an obvious false prophet.
Just a tad of deep thinking required here. Why oh why are the Democrats so massively committed to destroying Trump? Look at the breathtaking coordinated unconstitutional political malice and dirty tricks. Even this Manhattan "tax fraud" jury trial is a political move. Russiagate to Twittergate... it is all really the stuff of a massive constitutional crisis... but the Democrats are good with it. Why?
The reason is clear. They don't fear the establishment GOP without Trump. The establishment GOP is junk. They are nothing. They are an island with zero constituents. They don't have the female vote, they don't have the minority vote, they don't have big business, Wall Street, small business, academics, unions... they really don't have the Christian vote.
They don't have anything nor anyone other than themselves... old Peggy Noonan types.
Trump brought in the working class vote. A big constituency. And this also attacks a percentage of the minority vote. It also attracts the Christian vote.
This is why the Democrats have been on fire to destroy Trump. Otherwise, if Trump was so toxic they would just let him burn himself. Trump filled arenas. What other GOP candidate could fill arenas?
If you are a Republican never-Trumper in the fight against Trump, you are in effect a tool of the Democrats. You are giving them exactly what they wanted, exactly what they need. You are rewarding their malice. And what it means is that you are complicit in turning the US national political game into one that resembles California.
Maybe you think DeSantis will ride in on a white horse and that will allow you to maintain your high and mighty moral opinion of yourself and your GOP party (because, you know, Trump is so icky). But DeSantis does not yet have the support of the working class. And if he does manage to appeal to the Trump base, the Democrats will just turn the same on him... and then we will see the high and mighty establishment Republicans struggle yet again to shrug off that constant negative branding from their media propaganda feeds. The signs are not good here... the Democrat influence and emotional capture machine is big and strong... and the weak-minded are easily duped. And most of the electorate seems easy to dupe.
I am a life-long Republican and Trump is one of a few GOP politicians that are actually fighting the fight. Before him was Romney and McCain... the type of candidates the Democrats salivate over being put forth by the GOP.
You want Trump to go away? Fine, then the GOP goes away too like it has in California. Accept it as your responsibility, not Trump's nor his supporters.
Republicans need a state by state, county by county effort to recruit good candidates, and then train them how to run a campaign and respond to the inevitable personal attacks from Democrats.
Let us move on from blaming Trump for our problems.
(Collins put us in this situation in 2020, I'd love for you to go into detail on that fiasco.)
Trump may be a clown, but...come on, maaan...so many elected politicians personalities are not favorable.
Trump did, as president, what I wanted him to do, from the perspective of running the country.
The problem was and is, he won't be quiet.
Now, the left will not stop until they absolutely destroy Trump. I'm sure this is partially a revenge tactic and partially a signal to others that may want to run, and not be destroyed.
But...we should be the bigger people and just move on...as we are always told.
You are absolutely correct Erickson. Warnock has so many flaws as a person and politician, and the media covered for him. I believe the Republicans were essentially fighting Warnock and the media. I voted for Kelvin King, I believe if Walker had tied Warnock, his issues and the media's lack of coverage and corruption at hiding many Democratics public and private issues he may have persuaded border line votes for him. The Hunter Biden story, the FTX-Democratic relationship corruption, people just don't know how the media is in bed with Democrats. In the poll line I heard people saying they didn't like either candidate but like you mentioned its the Trump factor I believe made the Republicans lose.
My vote was to keep Warnock out of the Senate for 6 years, we need a better strategy to move forward, well said Erickson!!!!!!
Granted Warnock & his team had greater financial resources to run well filmed ads. Why Walker’s team couldn’t counter punch against some the ads is a mystery to me. My wife’s aunt is convinced he is an abusive person towards women from these attacks and voted for Warnock. I agree that national & state GOP need a major reset to improve messaging, ground game and candidates to move forward. While the country is seemingly evenly divided on key issues, the GOP needs to review how DeSantis got 60% of votes in this climate.
I did not vote for Walker in the Primary. I voted for Kelvin King. I didn't vote FOR Walker in November or in the runoff... I voted AGAINST Warnock. I would have voted for anyone who would have been a reliable vote against the Biden agenda.
The 2022 election should preclude Rona McDaniel, Rick Scott and Lindsay Graham fron ever being on air for their political insight. All three of them got it wrong.
Lee Zeldin for RNC Chair.
Considering how hard he campaigned for Walker, does Walker's loss put a damper on any future political plans Kemp may have?
Oz was a bad candidate and was connected to trump, he was a carpetbagger coming into a state he didn't live in and people in Pennsylvania would rather have a local person they know who is seriously disabled than a rich guy who they can't identify with from somewhere else. The media insulated Fetterman from scrutiny so no one knew how bad he was. Oz had large negatives going into the race and had to work to get to even. we lost 5 trump senate candidates who could have won if a better candidate was chosen. No more trump.
Just watched your Foxnews interview. Well done, i thought. Re: voting issues, What's your take on the efforts of several counties to challenge the legitimacy of the Dominion voting system and/or its vulnerability? Specifically, whether implementation of the Dominion system complied with State laws. In addition, whether the inability of voters to read the bar/QR/proprietary machine readable code to verify their vote is legal? There's no question that the system has vulnerabilities, but the only way to validate it is to do an actual audit of the paper ballots rather than just rerunning the 'bar' codes through the machines a second time. ????
Erick this was well written and still you made good critical points. I am, as always, impressed with your gift of acknowledging a person's weaknesses, even their unfitness, yet you still compassionately treat them as a person and an image bearer of God. This is a bedrock message which needs to be burned into the backside of every Republican who refuses to move on past Trump. I voted for him twice as well.
Can we please move forward to what?! Forget the final post runoff election autopsy this time around. Erick has proclaimed that the explanation is 1) Herschel was a bad candidate and 2) Trump. Or maybe it was 3) elections fraud or 4) US political migration, or 5) party expenditure decisions, or 6) some mystery reason unearthed in a deep-dive analysis of the election numbers. Maybe it was the weather. Who cares? Why must politicos try to make this so hard, or at least as convenient as selecting a couple of scapegoats to blame. Maybe the answer is far more simple, and far more devastating to the Republican Party. You see, loss is not about elections strategy; it is about policy. For 50 years, year after year, election after election, decade after decade, the Republican Party's candidates have promised to return us to a more conservative form of government. And then every year, every election, decade after decade, we give our money and work our hardest, and sometimes we thereby get "our people" elected. And then we all send up a resounding cheer! Then within a few months we realize that we have just elected George Bush, Jr, a deeply entrenched soft-left liberal RINO who continues to slowly and painfully advance this nation to the left. Maybe the simple explanation for loss is that after half of a century, too many of We the People have figured out that our precious freedom to vote (from among the two candidates carefully hand-selected by the political parties for us to choose from) does not in fact protect our freedom. So why bother? All of this is as simple as Charlie Brown, Lucy and a football. Lucy is the lying Republican politician, attempting to kick the football is electing that turd into office, and unfortunately, we the conservative voters are poor old Charlie Brown a year after every election lying flat on our back in pain and wondering what just happened.
I watched for 20 years as Democrats cheated their way to victory in close election after close election, first in Iowa and then in Virginia. I don't know why the Democrats then wouldn't cheat their way to victory in a close election with Trump. Long before Trump switched parties to the GOP, I'd been saying, "In any close election you can count on the Democrats to cheat their way to victory." I grew up in Cook County, Illinois, for that matter, where the motto is "Vote early; vote often," and I'm pretty sure that Daley had me vote for JFK--three weeks before I was born. The Democrats are notorious for cheating at elections (do I need to remind you of "Landslide Johnson?") so I don't see why it's suddenly become an "evil conspiracy theory" to believe that they cheated in 2020.
I disliked Trump so much that in 2016 that for the first time in my life I didn't vote for the GOP nominee for president (I voted third party). Democrats not only cheated in 2020 but cheated openly and notorious. There are plenty of cell phone videos of them locking the GOP out of the counting room and trying to paper over the windows to prevent the cameras from filming their cheating. Thousands of voters from across the country swore affidavits to report rampant Democratic Party cheating. So it was actually worse than the usual Democratic Party cheating, but a difference in volume rather than a difference in kind. I'm not sure why you have so much trouble accepting what's obvious to even someone like me who hopes DeSantis will trounce Trump in the GOP primaries. At least acknowledge the possibility that we're right about the cheating and stop insulting us for disagreeing with you. Thanks. :-)
Unfortunately, your independent friends will not vote for Walker because of past mental health challenges that he has overcome etc. But they will vote for a senile old man that does not know where he is most of the time and thinks we are living in 1919. He also inappropriately touches, kisses, and smells the hair of women and young girls, showered with his young daughter, has been overtly racist and may get the U.S. nuclear war, and shit his pants while meeting with the Pope. But candidate quality matters.................................
fachrissakes - all this verbiage over some insecure narcissistic jerk from NY? ENOUGH: we're done with Trump. If he won't go away on his own, somebody shoot him (preferably on 5th avenue)
I understand that Walker was far from the best candidate who made it extremely difficult for many Republicans to give him their vote. What I don't understand is how any Republican could vote for Warnock who also has many of his own undesirable issues. I would stay home before I would ever vote for an obvious false prophet.
Erick: we need to move on from trump.
Also Erick: invites MAGA babe election denier Boebert to his conservative rally in August.
Wanna explain, Erick?
Just a tad of deep thinking required here. Why oh why are the Democrats so massively committed to destroying Trump? Look at the breathtaking coordinated unconstitutional political malice and dirty tricks. Even this Manhattan "tax fraud" jury trial is a political move. Russiagate to Twittergate... it is all really the stuff of a massive constitutional crisis... but the Democrats are good with it. Why?
The reason is clear. They don't fear the establishment GOP without Trump. The establishment GOP is junk. They are nothing. They are an island with zero constituents. They don't have the female vote, they don't have the minority vote, they don't have big business, Wall Street, small business, academics, unions... they really don't have the Christian vote.
They don't have anything nor anyone other than themselves... old Peggy Noonan types.
Trump brought in the working class vote. A big constituency. And this also attacks a percentage of the minority vote. It also attracts the Christian vote.
This is why the Democrats have been on fire to destroy Trump. Otherwise, if Trump was so toxic they would just let him burn himself. Trump filled arenas. What other GOP candidate could fill arenas?
If you are a Republican never-Trumper in the fight against Trump, you are in effect a tool of the Democrats. You are giving them exactly what they wanted, exactly what they need. You are rewarding their malice. And what it means is that you are complicit in turning the US national political game into one that resembles California.
Maybe you think DeSantis will ride in on a white horse and that will allow you to maintain your high and mighty moral opinion of yourself and your GOP party (because, you know, Trump is so icky). But DeSantis does not yet have the support of the working class. And if he does manage to appeal to the Trump base, the Democrats will just turn the same on him... and then we will see the high and mighty establishment Republicans struggle yet again to shrug off that constant negative branding from their media propaganda feeds. The signs are not good here... the Democrat influence and emotional capture machine is big and strong... and the weak-minded are easily duped. And most of the electorate seems easy to dupe.
I am a life-long Republican and Trump is one of a few GOP politicians that are actually fighting the fight. Before him was Romney and McCain... the type of candidates the Democrats salivate over being put forth by the GOP.
You want Trump to go away? Fine, then the GOP goes away too like it has in California. Accept it as your responsibility, not Trump's nor his supporters.
Republicans need a state by state, county by county effort to recruit good candidates, and then train them how to run a campaign and respond to the inevitable personal attacks from Democrats.
Move on...yes please.
Let us move on from blaming Trump for our problems.
(Collins put us in this situation in 2020, I'd love for you to go into detail on that fiasco.)
Trump may be a clown, but...come on, maaan...so many elected politicians personalities are not favorable.
Trump did, as president, what I wanted him to do, from the perspective of running the country.
The problem was and is, he won't be quiet.
Now, the left will not stop until they absolutely destroy Trump. I'm sure this is partially a revenge tactic and partially a signal to others that may want to run, and not be destroyed.
But...we should be the bigger people and just move on...as we are always told.
You are absolutely correct Erickson. Warnock has so many flaws as a person and politician, and the media covered for him. I believe the Republicans were essentially fighting Warnock and the media. I voted for Kelvin King, I believe if Walker had tied Warnock, his issues and the media's lack of coverage and corruption at hiding many Democratics public and private issues he may have persuaded border line votes for him. The Hunter Biden story, the FTX-Democratic relationship corruption, people just don't know how the media is in bed with Democrats. In the poll line I heard people saying they didn't like either candidate but like you mentioned its the Trump factor I believe made the Republicans lose.
My vote was to keep Warnock out of the Senate for 6 years, we need a better strategy to move forward, well said Erickson!!!!!!
Granted Warnock & his team had greater financial resources to run well filmed ads. Why Walker’s team couldn’t counter punch against some the ads is a mystery to me. My wife’s aunt is convinced he is an abusive person towards women from these attacks and voted for Warnock. I agree that national & state GOP need a major reset to improve messaging, ground game and candidates to move forward. While the country is seemingly evenly divided on key issues, the GOP needs to review how DeSantis got 60% of votes in this climate.
Well said Erick...
I did not vote for Walker in the Primary. I voted for Kelvin King. I didn't vote FOR Walker in November or in the runoff... I voted AGAINST Warnock. I would have voted for anyone who would have been a reliable vote against the Biden agenda.
The 2022 election should preclude Rona McDaniel, Rick Scott and Lindsay Graham fron ever being on air for their political insight. All three of them got it wrong.
Lee Zeldin for RNC Chair.
Considering how hard he campaigned for Walker, does Walker's loss put a damper on any future political plans Kemp may have?
Oz was a bad candidate and was connected to trump, he was a carpetbagger coming into a state he didn't live in and people in Pennsylvania would rather have a local person they know who is seriously disabled than a rich guy who they can't identify with from somewhere else. The media insulated Fetterman from scrutiny so no one knew how bad he was. Oz had large negatives going into the race and had to work to get to even. we lost 5 trump senate candidates who could have won if a better candidate was chosen. No more trump.
Just watched your Foxnews interview. Well done, i thought. Re: voting issues, What's your take on the efforts of several counties to challenge the legitimacy of the Dominion voting system and/or its vulnerability? Specifically, whether implementation of the Dominion system complied with State laws. In addition, whether the inability of voters to read the bar/QR/proprietary machine readable code to verify their vote is legal? There's no question that the system has vulnerabilities, but the only way to validate it is to do an actual audit of the paper ballots rather than just rerunning the 'bar' codes through the machines a second time. ????
Erick this was well written and still you made good critical points. I am, as always, impressed with your gift of acknowledging a person's weaknesses, even their unfitness, yet you still compassionately treat them as a person and an image bearer of God. This is a bedrock message which needs to be burned into the backside of every Republican who refuses to move on past Trump. I voted for him twice as well.
I'm also past him, just as well.
Can we please move forward to what?! Forget the final post runoff election autopsy this time around. Erick has proclaimed that the explanation is 1) Herschel was a bad candidate and 2) Trump. Or maybe it was 3) elections fraud or 4) US political migration, or 5) party expenditure decisions, or 6) some mystery reason unearthed in a deep-dive analysis of the election numbers. Maybe it was the weather. Who cares? Why must politicos try to make this so hard, or at least as convenient as selecting a couple of scapegoats to blame. Maybe the answer is far more simple, and far more devastating to the Republican Party. You see, loss is not about elections strategy; it is about policy. For 50 years, year after year, election after election, decade after decade, the Republican Party's candidates have promised to return us to a more conservative form of government. And then every year, every election, decade after decade, we give our money and work our hardest, and sometimes we thereby get "our people" elected. And then we all send up a resounding cheer! Then within a few months we realize that we have just elected George Bush, Jr, a deeply entrenched soft-left liberal RINO who continues to slowly and painfully advance this nation to the left. Maybe the simple explanation for loss is that after half of a century, too many of We the People have figured out that our precious freedom to vote (from among the two candidates carefully hand-selected by the political parties for us to choose from) does not in fact protect our freedom. So why bother? All of this is as simple as Charlie Brown, Lucy and a football. Lucy is the lying Republican politician, attempting to kick the football is electing that turd into office, and unfortunately, we the conservative voters are poor old Charlie Brown a year after every election lying flat on our back in pain and wondering what just happened.
I watched for 20 years as Democrats cheated their way to victory in close election after close election, first in Iowa and then in Virginia. I don't know why the Democrats then wouldn't cheat their way to victory in a close election with Trump. Long before Trump switched parties to the GOP, I'd been saying, "In any close election you can count on the Democrats to cheat their way to victory." I grew up in Cook County, Illinois, for that matter, where the motto is "Vote early; vote often," and I'm pretty sure that Daley had me vote for JFK--three weeks before I was born. The Democrats are notorious for cheating at elections (do I need to remind you of "Landslide Johnson?") so I don't see why it's suddenly become an "evil conspiracy theory" to believe that they cheated in 2020.
I disliked Trump so much that in 2016 that for the first time in my life I didn't vote for the GOP nominee for president (I voted third party). Democrats not only cheated in 2020 but cheated openly and notorious. There are plenty of cell phone videos of them locking the GOP out of the counting room and trying to paper over the windows to prevent the cameras from filming their cheating. Thousands of voters from across the country swore affidavits to report rampant Democratic Party cheating. So it was actually worse than the usual Democratic Party cheating, but a difference in volume rather than a difference in kind. I'm not sure why you have so much trouble accepting what's obvious to even someone like me who hopes DeSantis will trounce Trump in the GOP primaries. At least acknowledge the possibility that we're right about the cheating and stop insulting us for disagreeing with you. Thanks. :-)
Unfortunately, your independent friends will not vote for Walker because of past mental health challenges that he has overcome etc. But they will vote for a senile old man that does not know where he is most of the time and thinks we are living in 1919. He also inappropriately touches, kisses, and smells the hair of women and young girls, showered with his young daughter, has been overtly racist and may get the U.S. nuclear war, and shit his pants while meeting with the Pope. But candidate quality matters.................................