It Shouldn't Take a 'Scandal' to Convince People Not to Make Herschel Walker a United States Senator

This! This is the thing that will sink Herschel Walker's campaign!

Yes, it's bad, at least in the sweet-summer-child vision of politics: Walker is running a campaign based on Christian Conservative Family Values, including banning abortion in all cases including rape and incest, and The Daily Beast produced evidence Monday night that he paid for an abortion in 2009. The conservative media apparatus was immediately plunged into disarray: Erick, son of Erick hopped out in front of things at 7:28 p.m. to declare that it was old news: "I thought we all knew this," he tweeted. Then, at 7:33, he added an update: "Note Walker is denying it. I thought it was an old story." He added a shrug emoji. Walker is indeed denying the story, and threatened to sue the Beast. But all over the tweet machine, right-wingers could be found calling the story fake news and/or old news. Walker didn't do it, and also he's a changed man since those bad old days!

The truth is that Walker could pay for an abortion today, right now, and these people would still support him and his quest to ban abortions. He could escort someone to the clinic this afternoon and get 42% of the vote next month. It's not exactly a revelation to point out that Republican politicians want to ban abortion for other people, not themselves or their (alleged) mistresses. It's a nice data point for Frank Wilhoit's maxim that "conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." But more than that, it's a testament to the fact that all that matters is what jersey you're wearing and whether you say the right things about Those People.

After all, Donald Trump was also held up as a family values champion, a joke that needs no explanation, and it was Trump who tapped Herschel Walker for this gig, presumably on the grounds that he'd endorsed Trump and he was famous in Georgia. (Walker was, for everything else, a phenomenal running back.) Like Trump's, though, the candidacy was cooked up in a lab to expose the "family values" stuff as just some threads in the Republican uniform. These are the things we say to get them to vote for us. It soon emerged that Walker had a bunch of kids with different women. But well before all of that, his ex-wife alleged he held a gun to her head and told her he was going to blow her brains out, one of many violent encounters she says she had with the former professional football player. Last night, Walker's son, Christian—who's spent the last year or so building a brand as a conservative media star—seemed to confirm the above:

It was never in doubt whether or not Walker is a "family man," but it's always been guaranteed that millions of people will pull the lever for him while declaring that he is.

Beyond this scandal or that one, though, there's the basic notion that it would require a "scandal" for someone to choose not to vote for Herschel Walker to be a United States senator. What is the affirmative argument that Herschel Walker should make the laws we all have to live by? What does he know about...anything? He says himself that he's "not that smart." How did we get to a place where it was acceptable to vote for stupid people to run the country? Maybe it always has been. Anti-intellectualism is nothing new as a feature of American political life. But it feels particularly acute these days when the main criterion for success as a Republican is a complete lack of shame. There are Democrats who say and do stupid things, and who fail their constituents, but how many truly compare even to the halfwit who could soon be the Speaker of the House if Republicans are successful in November?

There have always been idiots in public office, but Trump seems to have ushered in an era when competence and "knowing things" are completely irrelevant. Walker's plan to prevent school shootings is, along with prayer, "a department that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at social media." But don't worry, he's at least coming to grips with his personal shortcomings: "I'm always accountable to whatever I've ever done," he once said, "And that's what I tell people: I'm accountable to it."

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