Hey Republicans, Candidate Quality Still Matters

I went to breakfast with Herschel Walker last year after he secured the GOP nomination but before the general election. I knew after leaving that Herschel had no chance of beating Warnock. In his defense, Walker surrounded himself with some of the best people in politics and improved as a candidate as the campaign progressed. However, Herschel Walker was a deeply flawed candidate on a myriad of fronts and Republican primary voters didn’t seem to care. Similarly flawed candidates like Kari Lake in Arizona or just this week, Dan Kelly in Wisconsin, flushed away winnable seats by singularly focusing on the purity of winning the primary without the hassle of broadening the base in the general.

While it falls on the candidate and the campaign to define a message that wins more than just hardcore primary Republicans, voters must also support candidates who have a history of appealing to more than just the hardcore partisans. If we don’t, Democrats will continue to dominate swing-state politics.