Walker's loss in Ga. spurs new GOP hand-wringing, calls for new strategy [View all]

[brooklynite]

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Source: Washington Post

Herschel Walker’s loss in a pivotal Georgia Senate race Tuesday has renewed Republican calls to break with former president Donald Trump and rethink the party’s strategy ahead of 2024, as lawmakers and operatives reckoned with the final blow in a profoundly disappointing midterm cycle.

The recriminations were swift as Republicans began the autopsy of Walker’s race on Wednesday, sparring over who and what cost them the seat. Many blamed Trump for urging Walker, a former football star with no political experience and a slew of allegations about his personal life, to run for the Senate against Democratic Sen. Raphael G. Warnock, betting on his celebrity in a high-stakes midterm election in which Republicans needed to net just one seat to take the majority.

Republican operatives raised concerns about spending deficits, on-the-ground strategy and the party’s ability to appeal beyond its base. But the hand-wringing repeatedly came back to their candidate, one of many inexperienced and polarizing nominees who lost battleground races this year.

Brian Robinson, a GOP operative in Georgia, said that despite all the hurdles, Walker “almost pulled this off,” noting that he still captured more than 48 percent of the vote. But to earn those extra few percentage points to win in Georgia, Republicans need candidates who can persuade whom he called “comparison shoppers,” not “tribal voters.” Other Republicans who won across the state on Nov. 8 ran as “steadyhanded, levelheaded, competent, no-fireworks leaders,” he said.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/07/georgia-senate-runoff-walker-warnock/