Brian Ballard, a prominent Republican lobbyist in Washington, held an event over the summer for Herschel Walker and came away with a positive impression of the Senate candidate. Ballard even told The Washington Post that those in attendance came away “hugely impressed” with the Georgian’s “grasp on policy.”
As regular readers know, there’s some reason for skepticism on this front. Over the course of his campaign, Walker has run into all kinds of problems, but his difficulties with substance have been especially difficult to explain away. When he tried to share some thoughts on energy policy, for example, it was an embarrassing disaster: As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones put it, Walker “delivered a meandering response that was detached from reality and syntax.”
A month later, the former football player reflected on mass shootings in schools, and the resulting word salad was a mess. When Walker tried to talk about voting rights, his comments were even less coherent.
But the climate crisis has been an especially problematic area. The Republican tried summarizing his thoughts on the issue in July, for example, and the result was 140 words of gibberish, culminating in this gem: “Since we don’t control the air, our good air decide to float over to China’s bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. And now we got to clean that back up.”
A month later, he proceeded to adopt an oddly anti-tree posture, declaring, “We’ve got enough trees.”
Those hoping the first-time candidate’s advisers might be able to bring him up to speed have learned otherwise. Yahoo News reported:
Campaigning in Georgia on Sunday, Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker said the United States is not ready to implement policies like the Green New Deal that are designed to address climate change. Instead, Walker suggested the country needs to “keep having those gas-guzzling cars” that produce “good emissions.”
“If we was ready for the green agenda, I’d raise my hand right now,” the GOP candidate said. “But we’re not ready right now. So don’t let them fool you like this is a new agenda. This is not a new agenda. We’re not prepared. We’re not ready right now. What we need to do is keep having those gas-guzzling cars, ’cause we got the good emissions under those cars. We’re doing the best thing that we can.” Watching the video of the comments, Walker’s audience didn’t exactly applaud the comments. Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker (R): "If we was ready for the green agenda, I'd raise my hand right now. But we're not ready right now … What we need to do is keep having those gas-guzzling cars, 'cause we got the good emissions under those cars." pic.twitter.com/KwEIEpdg8C As for the runoff election between Walker and Sen. Raphael Warnock — a contest that will be held three weeks from today — the Senate Democrats’ main super PAC will reportedly spend more than $4 million in the hopes of boosting the incumbent. The National Republican Senatorial Committee reserved $700,000 in airtime last week, and the Senate GOP leadership’s main super PAC claims it’ll follow suit soon.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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