Finally, Republicans admit they don’t care about Herschel Walker’s lies

Donald Trump’s 2016 boast that he could shoot someone on a New York street without losing votes might have been the last unironically honest statements from a Republican on the campaign trail. Since then, his party has bombarded the country with “alternative facts,” and this year served up Herschel Walker, a man who lies more easily than he scored touchdowns as a Heisman Trophy winner, as its candidate for U.S. Senate.

Today, Walker’s lies and his party’s hypocrisy in supporting him for Senate will make for a ridiculous display of solidarity in Georgia with Republican senators Rick Scott of Florida and Tom Cotton of Alabama traveling to the state for “Huddle with Herschel,”an event designed to prop up Walker’s troubled campaign. Who else is huddling with Herschel? The better question is what, and the answer is a whole lotta Republican money. Donald Trump’s PAC dropped about $1 million on attack ads against incumbent Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock since last week, and that’s not even half the cash that’s pouring in to drag Walker across the finish line. But never mind how much Republicans are spending to elect Walker. Let’s stay focused on how often they tell the truth, which at this point is pretty much only when they don’t realize exactly what they’re saying, like when former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler said the quiet part out loud about Walker’s campaign for her old seat this week, according to Georgia Public Broadcasting.

My focus as someone evaluating candidates is what will they stand for in Washington? What will their votes be?

Ah, there it is.

For those that struggle with reading between lines, Loeffler is admitting that as a former U.S. Senator and as someone with input into who her party wanted to run for her own seat, he only cares about one thing: How Walker would vote once elected. Which is to say she and another Republicans don’t care that Walker allegedly paid a woman to abort their child together and tried to coax her into a second abortion, or that he lied about being a member of law enforcement, or that he allegedly abused his ex-wife and threatened her with a gun, or that he had secret children who he abandoned, or that he lied about having a college degree. Or that he did all those things while campaigning in a party that pretends to care about traditional family values (whatever those are), worked for 50 years to overturn women’s right to have an abortion and claims to back law enforcement unequivocally. By Loeffler’s own words the one and only thing her party really cares about is power, which in this instance means regaining control of the Senate, which can only happen if Walker retakes the seat that Loeffler herself fumbled two years ago. It’d be worth asking why she didn’t just re-run for the seat herself, but she also couldn’t even hold onto the WNBA team she owned, so Walker it is. Loeffler and her party will do their best to drag him to Washington where he can help pass their agenda items, whatever those are. And whatever lies he needs to tell and they need ignore between now and then, so be it.