Hypocrisy Without Shame

Republicans rallied behind embattled Georgia senatorial candidate Herschel Walker, after accusations that back in 2009, he paid for a girlfriend to have an abortion; later requesting a second one after a subsequent pregnancy, which she refused. He has been campaigning on the Republican line of abolishing the right to abortions in all situations, and now finds himself in a bit of a pickle. i.e. ‘do what I say, not what I do perhaps?’ Today worried Republicans showed no concerns about conflicting messaging and rushed to defend him. Senators Rick Scott of Florida and Tom Cotton of Arkansas both spoke out in favor of the ability of a person to change over time and defended Walker while denying their hypocrisy. The party started pouring money for ads into Georgia.

Just in case you might wonder-the Oxford dictionary defines hypocrisy as: “the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense.”

Herschel Walker was a famous Georgia state football player who also played pro football. He presents a formidable presence, as former athletes often do. As a player on the old Apprentice TV show, he became a favorite of the former president who encouraged him to run and endorsed his candidacy. However, once he got out on the campaign trail, many of his deficiencies in knowledge, background claims, and domestic issues became known more widely. He rarely provides coherent answers to reporters’ questions, and some of his theories about COVID are strange. Some say that the powers that be chose him because the party wanted to find another black man to contest the senate seat currently held by the Reverend Dr. Raphael Warnock, a preacher at Dr. King’s former church in Atlanta.

Voters in Georgia elected the current Senator to fill a partial term after the previous senator left because of illness and the governor appointed Senator Perdue to fill the rest of the term on an interim basis. Perdue and Warnock met in a momentous showdown in a run-off election after the presidential election in 2020. Many thought that the rages of the defeated president about the stolen election kept some Georgian Republicans home from the run-off, which Warnock won in a close race right before the January 6^th insurrection. The election of the two senators from Georgia tripped the Senate control to the Democrats and the Republicans have been fighting to regain control ever since that election.

Walker has defended his actions from prior years as related to mental illness and loose living, from which he has now been saved and redeemed. I guess that is all that one can claim when one has a past that includes lying about his employment, stalking women, domestic violence, fathering, then not supporting many children, and threatening a former wife with a gun to her head. After turning down many debates, he and Dr. Warnock are supposed to meet in a debate later this week, where these topics are likely to be raised. Rev. Warnock has tried to stay above the fray and reinforce that he is running on issues important to Georgians and other Americans, so I guess we shall see how this all ends soon. The race is currently giving Warnock a slight lead, but that is not secure.

In other Senate races, such as n Ohio and Pennsylvania, Republican candidates have not been doing well possibly because of their extreme issue choices and anti-abortion support. However, as the mid-terms are getting closer, the races are tightening according to 538. In PA, Fetterman leads Oz by a range of 2-4 points down from double digits recently. Races in Ohio and Wisconsin still favor the Republicans, although the races are also close with Ryan closing in (and some polls say winning) and Barnes in Wisconsin, not far behind the flighty Senator Johnson. In Arizona, the polls favored incumbent Democrat Senator Kelly to beat Masters, and in Nevada, Laxalt is close to tying Democratic Senador Cortes-Masto, although she hopes that the votes of women will pull her through.

In Nevada, Covid and the economy have hit the hotel industry hard, which affected many in the mostly Hispanic workforce. Wages stagnated when the workers kept their jobs. Democrats have tried outreach to this ethnic group, but Republicans have been making inroads, often through the growing number of Hispanic evangelicals, where preachers, some say, do not see a need to separate church and state. So, over the last two national elections, more Hispanic men voted for conservatives and republicans than previously. A recent election in south Texas to fill a formerly democratic-held Congressional seat went to a Republican Latina woman who is an evangelical.

Still, according to Pew research, most Hispanics favor Democrats to solve issues they care about, such as the economy, climate change, healthcare, and education. Those who favor Democrats also support abortion. Hispanic Republicans have concerns about violent crime besides the economy, access to guns, and immigration.

Older women are concerned about protecting Social Security, according to a poll taken by AARP and reported by CNBC, and 94% of women over 50 plan to vote. So, Senator Scott’s ideas of sun-setting and reauthorizing Social Security and Medicare every five years might not find favor here. According to an article in a recent Brookings publication: “but more importantly, women vote more often than men—in the 2020 presidential election, women constituted 52% of the electorate compared to 48% for men. The article further states: “So, we now face an election where that (abortion)is exactly what is on the ballot. Everyone born with a uterus has an interest and a stake in the abortion issue that those without a uterus do not have—meaning, the abortion issue will be intense for a lot of people. In addition to the intensity of this issue is the sheer number of females in the population and the electorate. First, there are more women than men in America—167,500,000 women compared to 164,380,000 men.”

Here, the author states that the intensity of this issue is what she believes will drive women to the polls. If she is correct, that is good news for Democrats. Two recent sub-elections for vacant seats, one in NY and one in Alaska, elected Democrats, and abortion concerns were key. That is too little information to call it a trend. To my way of thinking, if this issue is driving women voters, why are the polls so close? This weekend many thousands of women marched in demonstrations across the country for abortion rights. Many carried signs saying “we won’t go back.” They held one of the larger rallies here in Washington, DC. It was reported as seen here on NBC news. The crowd was diverse and animated and included men and women. Interestingly, many wore the pink hats they wore from the earlier Women’s March; a protest that was held the day after the former president was inaugurated in 2017. Remember the statement, don’t get mad, get even? If these women all vote, they can certainly make a statement and maybe change history for some. I am unsure what to do about the states that have banished any access to care for abortion. Large corporations still say that they will pay for employees to leave their home states to get needed abortion services, but this is yet to be proven.

Even though black unemployment is down according to the latest economic news, black voters say they have had a tougher time recovering from the pandemic than white residents. The pandemic also more severely affected the black population, especially in areas where access to health care was difficult. Many owned small businesses that did not qualify for pandemic relief, while many others worked in industries such as hospitality that were hard hit by the downturn. They were also more likely to be renters and experience food and housing insecurity. In a survey by the Hill during the summer, many black respondents wanted President Biden to move the economy faster. Perhaps now that the Stimulus and the Recovery Acts have both passed, blacks may be more satisfied with the results as employment picks up.

However, one of the most important issues for black voters was white supremacy and terrorist killings of black residents. This survey was taken not long after black shoppers in a Buffalo supermarket had been gunned down in a racially motivated killing spree by a youth attracted to supremacist hatred. Asian voters are also concerned about hate crimes, crime in general and sterotypes, the state of the economy, choice, education, health care and climate change. They also wanted their history more represented in school texts. (Well, if the Florida and Texas governors will get their way, neither Blacks nor Asians will have adequate representation in the texts since the authorities do not wish to trouble students. So in their rewritten histories, slavery was all happy plantation life and Japaenese Americans enjoyed being uprooted and sent to camps?)

Recent remarks by Senator Tuberville of Alabama appearing at a MAGA rally in Nevada showed he believed black people committed most crimes and now the Democrats want to pay off these criminals with reparations. How preposterous! And this man was a university coach!

This, according to the Washington Post, is what he said: “They’re not soft on crime,” Tuberville said of Democrats. “They’re pro-crime. They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”

However, according to the Post, “Tuberville is falsely suggesting that Democrats promote crime and that only Blacks are the perpetrators. In fact, crime has slowed in the last year and most crimes are committed by whites, according to FBI data.”

Remember the caravans that were coming in 2018? Now it is crime that the Republicans are claiming is running rampant in our streets. Funny, they do not seem to mention the scores of illegal guns on the streets being used by criminals. Their doom and gloom about crime would have those small-towners in the cornfields of the Midwest hiding under their beds, waiting for the mobs of criminals to come and steal their hard-earned property. Hey folks, it just isn’t true.

The mid-terms are now less than one month away and early voting will start soon in many states. I guess there could be more October surprises, but I hope there are not.

The American people seem to realize that their way of life and our democracy are on the ballot and we have to get out there and defend these values if we wish for democracy, not autocracy, to prevail. According to an article in Vanity Fair by Eric Lutz, there has been a shift in voters’ concerns away from the economy as gas prices came down, to the future of our democracy. The article states: “But more than that, the poll seems to speak to a growing recognition, by the American public, that the GOP’s sweeping assault on the country’s election system has put democracy itself on the ballot.” (More about this next time!)

Oh, the latest reports are that DJT is possibly holding on to more papers, perhaps hoping he can trade them for information in the Mueller reports or the investigations of his enemies. So, the criminal is trying to barter with stolen goods, it seems? My head aches.

“Til next week-Peace!