It’s the Candidates, Stupid
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In the aftermath of Republicans’ historically poor performance in key races around the country during the midterms, there’s an emerging effort by some on the right to apply whatever the opposite of Occam’s Razor is in search of an explanation.
After Herschel Walker fell short of unseating Raphael Warnock (D-GA) on Tuesday night, for example, Greg Price of X Strategies mocked those attributing GOP losses this cycle to the failings of their candidates, tweeting that “Republicans can win with the worst candidate ever if we understand that elections in 2022 are ballot counting operations.” He later doubled down on the sentiment, insisting that “elections today are not games of persuasion.”
Price had previously argued on Twitter that the disappointing returns from Election Day could be attributed to “Republicans shitting the bed when it comes to taking advantage of the evolving voting procedures.” Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, nodded along vigorously.
“There are dozens of contributing factors. But this single one explains at least 60% of the election outcome, maybe much more,” she argued.
Newsmax’s Benny Johnson hysterically submitted that the GOP needed to “control the process of ballot algorithms and place restrictions on post-election ‘counting’ or doom the GOP to permanent federal minority in both chambers and abandon the White House forever.”
It’s hard to fathom how any serious-minded Republican can survey the wreckage of the 2022 midterms and come to the conclusion that amorphous “algorithms” and an inability to count votes are what most plague it.
After all, if that were the case, how would one explain why Georgia Republicans proved so effective at counting ballots for incumbent governor Brian Kemp, who prevailed by 7.5 points over Stacey Abrams, a fundraising juggernaut with near-universal name recognition, and so bad at counting votes for Walker. Chalk the difference in their performances up to Kemp and Warnock’s respective incumbency advantages if you’d like, but Kemp beat Abrams for the first time in the Democratic wave year of 2018, and every single other Republican not named Herschel Walker running statewide in Georgia this year also came out on top.
The same phenomenon could be observed in Arizona, where Blake Masters, the early prototype for a Westworld host, and Kari Lake, the talented but psychotic soccer mom, both lost after wholeheartedly embracing the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. Kimberly Yee, the generic Republican nominee for state treasurer who originally planned to compete in the GOP gubernatorial primary, won by more than 11 points. Republican candidates for Congress in the state also outpaced their Democratic counterparts.
Almost 13 points separated Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s Republican governor, and his landslide reelection victory from Don Bolduc, Republicans’ fervent, and then faint-hearted Stop-the Steal-er Senate candidate.
In Pennsylvania, too, poor candidates for governor (Doug Mastriano, a proud attendee of the rally that preceded the January 6 Capitol riot) and the Senate (Dr. Mehmet Oz, a carpetbagging fish oil salesman) wasted opportunities in a state where President Joe Biden’s approval rating had fallen underwater by 18 points ahead of Election Day.
It’s understandable why people who have staked their careers on Trump’s political success feel the need to pretend that his handpicked candidates in swing states — all of whom lost — were victims rather than suicide bombers.
If voters’ attention can be diverted away from the tangible failings of the candidates this cadre has thrown their weight behind, and toward systems and processes that voters associate with “the establishment,” a moment of vulnerability for the Trump-enthusiastic right can be turned into one of opportunity.
Hemingway, the author of Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections(2021), has already provided a roadmap for bad candidates seeking to escape blame for their own defeats: Sidestep the most embarrassing claims of fraud (like Hugo Chavez’s ghost haunting America’s polling places) and hurl as much nonsense at the wall as you can.
But for those Republicans with no reputational or pecuniary interests in seeing the crazy wing of the GOP succeed in primary elections, the path forward is both clear and simple: Ignore the noise, resist the siren song of victimhood being sold by self-interested influencers, and for goodness sake, stop nominating the candidates who most nearly resemble the Babadook in every swing state.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
