HEY REPUBLICANS, IF YOU WANT TO STOP HERSCHEL WALKER, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

Politico tells us this today about the favorite in the Georgia Senate election:

And in a remarkable coincidence, here's a story about Walker at CNN:

For years, Herschel Walker has told the same inspiring story: that he graduated in the top 1% of his class at the University of Georgia. He's told the story, according to a review of his speeches by CNN's KFile, during motivational speeches over the years and as recently as 2017. The only problem: it's not true.

Walker, who is a candidate in the Republican primary race for US Senate in Georgia, acknowledged in December that he did not graduate from Georgia after the Atlanta-Journal Constitution first reported that the false claim was listed on his campaign website.

But a CNN KFile review found that Walker himself has been repeating the claim for years. Walker's comments in 2017, and others made over the years, show the former football star repeatedly misrepresented his academic credentials.

"And all of sudden I started going to the library, getting books, standing in front of a mirror reading to myself," Walker said in a 2017 motivational speech. "So that Herschel that all the kids said was retarded become valedictorian of his class. Graduated University of Georgia in the top 1% of his class."

Do the anti-Walker Republicans who (I assume) spoon-fed this story to CNN seriously believe that being less educated than he's claimed to be will hurt Walker? Really? In America? We sometimes display respect for education in this country, but mostly we don't trust it. We think well-educated people are soft-bellied oddballs. So I can't see how this could possibly hurt him.

But this is clearly a minor attack compared to what Walker's primary opponents hope will really bring him down, as Politico reports:

In the eight weeks running up to the May 24 primary, two super PACs supporting Walker’s GOP rivals plan to drop millions of dollars in ads attacking Walker, according to people familiar with their spending plans....

Walker is still expected to finish first in the primary. But his opponents intend to drive his support under 50 percent and force him into a June runoff, when the second-place finisher will be able to focus attention on what many Georgia Republicans contend is Walker’s unique vulnerability to Democratic attack: his history of alleged domestic abuse....

At a meeting of the Putnam County Republican Party on Monday night, Walker’s leading challenger, state Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, closed his stump speech with an impassioned appeal for the crowd to do their research on Walker.

“Folks, he can’t win in November,” Black said, raising his voice as he spoke. “The baggage is too heavy. It’ll never happen.”

“Let the Democrats pour $140 million on top of domestic violence and threatening shootouts with police,” he added. “Let that happen. That discussion is going to be had right now. I’m pretty passionate about that.”

Black was referring to police reports documenting Walker’s past run-ins with law enforcement and instances of alleged domestic violence. Walker has publicly discussed his long history with mental illness.

I don't know how much Georgia Republicans know about this, but it's been widely discussed in the national press and still Walker has a 60-point lead over Black in the Real Clear Politics average. Also, he leads the Democratic incumbent, Raphael Warnock, by 1 in general election polls.

Voters in Alabama turned against Roy Moore in the 2017 Senate election, but that's because his misdeeds involved underage girls. I'm convinced that a disturbing large percentage of Americans believe that violence against your wife is just a normal event in a marriage, and that people who worry about such violence are disproportionately man-hating liberal feminists. Other voters, I'm sure, will accept that Walker had mental health problems that are under control now, as he regularly insists, or will assume that the stories are fake news. In a country where the sexually violent Eric Greitens is at or near the lead in every poll in the Missouri GOP Senate primary, and is leading in most general election polls (and where the seemingly disgraced groper Andrew Cuomo trails the governor who replaced him by only single digits in Democratic primary polling), I have trouble imagining voters doing the right thing and rejecting an abuser.

Some of you will argue that there'll be a double standard -- Greitens and Cuomo are white, but Walker is Black. (Walker's principal challenger, Gary Black, is white.) I'd believe that except that Walker's lead in the polls is overwhelming -- 66.0 to Black's 6.3 in the RCP average. Walker was a college football star, and he's a Trump fan from way back. It's hard to beat that combination in the South. I think he'll be the kind of Black person Republicans like to wave in Democrats' faces to show that they're not racist.

Several paragraphs into the Politico story, we read this:

... a memo sent March 18 to Black’s donors, obtained by POLITICO, says Black’s campaign hired Meeting Street Insights to conduct internal polling in late February and found Walker’s support dropped to 38 percent after Republican primary voters were informed about past allegations and his support for granting a pathway to citizenship to some immigrants living in the country illegally.

I think that immigration position is a huge vulnerability for Walker in a Republican primary. If I were running against him, I'd seriously consider spending more money talking about that than about domestic abuse. Last fall, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported:

[Walker] told USA Today in August 2015 that he supports Trump’s idea of building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico but disagreed with his plan to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally. He also said then that he’d back a proposal that enables such immigrants to earn citizenship.

In a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Walker’s campaign didn’t disavow his previous comments about opposing Trump’s deportation policy or his endorsement of an immigration overhaul that would grant a path to citizenship for millions.

Gary Black's campaign was on it:

Black’s campaign on Monday sharply critical of Walker’s immigration approach.

“Herschel Walker’s immigration policy is like an illegitimate love child of Mitt Romney and Nancy Pelosi,” said spokesman Dan McLagan, invoking two politicians reviled by many Georgia Republicans. “Republicans are going to throw up in their mouths a little when they hear about it.”

More of that will work. I suspect it will be more effective in the Republican primary than calling Walker a domestic abuser.