GOP Senate Hopeful Herschel Walker Babbles Incoherently About Evolution & Energy Policy

I'm old enough to remember a time when we demanded that candidates know something about policy issues before we would contemplate voting for them. Then Sarah Palin and Donald Trump came along and that notion just flew out the window. These days, Republicans seem to have an affinity for candidates that haven't cracked a book since grade school.

Herschel Walker is a former football star and Donald Trump's favorite candidate to take on Georgia's Dem. Sen. Raphael Warnock in the Fall. Walker has Republican primary opponents but polls show him crushing them despite allegations of domestic violence, business failures, and lies about his educational background. So far, name recognition and the Trump endorsement have been enough to propel him into the lead.

Recently, he's been out on the campaign trail [mostly Fox News] attacking Sen. Warnock and President Joe Biden and occasionally answering a pointed question about public policy. The problem is that Walker appears absolutely clueless about even the most basic policy questions, and please don't ask him anything about science. During a March interview with Pastor Chuck Hill of Sugar Creek Church in suburban Atlanta Walker proved that he has no idea how evolution takes place in nature:

HuffPost: Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker cast doubt on the theory of evolution in recent remarks, saying the fact that apes and humans coexist disproves accepted science. “At one time, science said man came from apes, did it not? … If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.”

Herschel, OK, we thought about it and you are a moron. Humans and today's apes branched from a common ancestor millions of years ago. That error probably won't hurt his chances in Georgia's mostly white evangelical Republican primary. However, he doesn't really seem to grasp energy policy either.

In an interview this week with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Walker provided an incoherent evaluation of Biden administration energy policy.

MSNBC: [Walker] “We have got an administration that is — that they’re not leaders. They’re almost — they’re waiting to — they’re more reactive, rather than proactive. And what I mean by that is, one of the first thing they did — and I think people need to know this — is they decided that they were going to give up our energy. By him going out giving up our energy, and now we’re not energy-independent anymore, which started the whole downfall.”

I suspect that Walker was trying to say that Biden had shut down oil production in the United States and caused the price of gas to spike. That's nonsense. Biden hasn't "given up our energy" and the United States is still a net energy exporter. The problem is that as the world rebounds from the pandemic, global demand is increasing faster than suppliers and refiners were prepared for and the fallout following the Russian invasion of Ukraine exacerbated the problem. We buy our oil on the world market like everyone else, so we have experienced price increases. High prices are encouraging drillers in the US and globally to sink new wells which will increase the supply by the end of the year. That's how the global energy market works. It's not a mystery.

Herschel Walker ‘s campaign has wisely decided to restrict his appearances to GOP gatherings and friendly Fox News interviews ahead of the May 24th Republican primary, and Walker has refused to debate his primary opponents. And, a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution article notes that his Republican handlers feel like they have to school him on public policy before he embarrasses himself again.

But here's the thing; It's not at all clear that Republican voters even care that he's not the sharpest tool in the shed. Walker is polling way ahead of his Republican rivals despite his checkered past and cringe-worthy lapses on the campaign trail. They will nominate him because they believe he can beat Sen. Warnock, and that appears to be enough for them.

#politics

By: Don Lam & Curated Content