Dem
50
Ties
1
GOP
49
If you're looking for entertainment, then the campaign of would-be U.S. Senator Herschel Walker (R) is the gift that keeps on giving, with still more news breaking in the last couple of days. To start, it was already reported last week that Walker took a tax break on his house in Texas that is only available to Texas residents. The candidate has explained that—and the general charge that he's a carpetbagger—away by noting that he has a home in Georgia, too. However, The Daily Beast has discovered that until very recently, Walker was renting out the Georgia house.
For those keeping score at home, then, we have a fellow who lives in his Texas house and doesn't live in his Georgia house. That sounds like "Texas resident" to us. This does not make him ineligible to serve in the Senate, mind you—a person only has to live in the state they represent while serving, not while running. However, it does mean another spate of headlines reminding Georgians that Walker is a carpetbagger. And Southerners, in particular, are not big fans of carpetbaggers.
Meanwhile, the last time Georgia had a U.S. Senate runoff—all the way back in 2021—Donald Trump campaigned aggressively for the Republican candidates (David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler), including holding several rallies. That did not work out so well. Nor did his campaigning for the folks who challenged Georgia governor Brian Kemp (R) and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger (R) in the primaries. In other words, the former president is a net negative in the Peach State, enough so that even Walker (or someone who works for him, at least) realizes it. So, the Walker campaign has not asked Trump to come to Georgia, and is hoping he'll stay at Mar-a-Lago until the election is over. If the Republicans won't reject Trump, but they can't afford to embrace him, that certainly leaves him in a strange political netherworld.
And finally, this isn't particularly important, but it is amusing. Recall that, back in July, Walker was expressing his disdain for the Green New Deal. He was trying to make the point that eco-friendly rules in the U.S. won't matter much if China continues to ride roughshod over the environment. That's potentially a fair argument. However, Walker expressed this view in the clunkiest way imaginable:
Since we don't control the air, our good air decided to float over to China's bad air so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then now we got to clean that back up, while they're messing ours up.
We bring this up because reader M.U. in Seattle, WA, brought our attention to this site: www.herschelwalker.shop. It "sells" products like this:
The site has many other products that reference Walker's various gaffes. The products aren't real, unfortunately, but they do let us know that, as M.U. puts it, "Apparently Sen.-elect John Fetterman (D-PA) isn't the only one who can brutally mock his opponent!" Clearly, we are now squarely in the era of the ironic campaign. (Z)