ICYMI: In Race for the Senate, Republicans Not Sending Their Best [RealClearPolitics]

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RealClearPolitics: In Race for the Senate, Republicans Not Sending Their Best
By Bill Scher
June 8, 2022

Key Points:

• The emerging GOP lineup of Senate candidates is no Murderers’ Row.

• Herschel Walker… stumbled out of the general election gate with a rambling Fox News interview, in which he proposed addressing gun violence with “a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women that’s looking at social media.”

• Furthermore, Walker has faced old accusations of domestic abuse which will likely get more attention in the general election than they did in the primary.

• Democrats will not be shy about any of it. They started last week by releasing an attack ad featuring Walker hawking a quack cure for COVID-19.

• Mehmet Oz eked out a win in the Pennsylvania primary with just 31% of the vote… but not before his Republican rivals pummeled him as a Hollywood phony. An Emerson College poll taken just before the primary found Oz had a 48% unfavorable rating – and that was just among his fellow Republicans.

• Like Dr. Oz, the Republican nominee J.D. Vance is showing scars from his hard-fought, Trump-aided narrow primary win… More voters had an unfavorable view of Vance than a favorable one, while the opposite was true for Ryan.

• After 12 years representing this closely divided state, and showing an increased appetite for conspiracy theories, [Wisconsin Sen. Ron] Johnson appears to be overstaying his welcome. In a Marquette Law School poll from April, Johnson received a favorable rating of just 36% – 10 points lower than his unfavorable rating.

• In three other Senate races… we don’t know yet who the Republican nominee will be, but in each, Republicans run a risk for nominating someone unelectable.

• Trump just elevated the prospects of Arizona venture capitalist Blake Masters with his endorsement. But Masters is on record saying “everybody should read” the works of the convicted domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, because “there’s a lot of insight there.” That may well end up in a few Democratic attack ads if he becomes the nominee.

• The Republican field in New Hampshire is filled with candidates who are little known among voters.

• The 2022 Senate elections do not take place in every state. The 2022 Senate map is slightly skewed in the Democrats’ favor.

• Republicans appear poised to battle for the Senate in Biden-won states with a battalion of Trump loyalists.

• To borrow a phrase from Mr. Trump, they are not sending their best.

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