Republicans Fumbled this Election

By Noah Brown 

November 2022 

Republicans really blew it this November. If you were following the 2022 Midterm Elections at all, you know that most polls and news outlets were projecting a red wave to flow through the nation, picking up enough seats in the Senate and House of Representatives to flip both, and coming out on top in gubernatorial races as well. Even if you weren’t following the elections, most people could feel the palpable frustration with the current state of America, with the inflating economy the most relevant issue to American voters. All signs were pointing to Republican success.

That didn’t materialize. Instead of handily retaking both chambers of congress, Republicans are set to just barely gain control of the House, and the Senate is at most tied 50/50, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote ensuring a Democratic majority for the next two years. If incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock is able to stave off his challenger, the controversial ex-NFL player Herschel Walker, Democrats will have an outright majority in the Senate, and will have actually gained a seat, after successfully defending the rest of their seats up for election and gaining a seat in Pennsylvania. In the one area where all is truly said and done results-wise, the Gubernatorial races, Democrats gained two seats.

The Georgia and Pennsylvania elections are excellent examples of one of the biggest reasons Republicans failed to take the Senate, and generally underperformed across the board: candidate quality. Generally, Democrats sent forward candidates that were, well, actual candidates. That’s not to say their candidates were ‘perfect’ or even ‘good’, I won’t take a stance on that here. However, they were candidates. Republicans trotted out a ton of absolutely crazy people. Herschel Walker, aside from being incredibly unqualified to hold any kind of public office in the first place, is a raging homophobe, transphobe, and of course a conspiracy theorist. When asked about his stance on gun control in the wake of the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, he stated that one of the ways to prevent further shootings would be to create "a department that can look at young men that's looking at women that's looking at social media". What does that even mean? It’s impressive(and concerning) enough that Walker has managed to force Warnock into a runoff, but it’s also evidence that if Republicans had sent out a remotely sane candidate, they almost definitely would have flipped the seat.

Walker is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to crazy Republican candidates. The funny thing is, if the area or state they run in is red enough, these people are still electable-- for example, Marjorie Taylor Greene is an open QAnon believer(and just generally insane) and has a very comfortable seat in the House. If you put them in close races, however, things are likely to go less smoothly. 2020 election deniers generally did very poorly compared to their common-sensed counterparts. Pennsylvania, which is looking bluer than ever since John Fetterman’s relatively narrow defeat of Mehmet Oz, who questioned the results of the 2020 Presidential Election but did not fully deny it, saw a much heavier defeat in the gubernatorial race. Doug Mastriano, who vehemently denied the results of the election, lost to Democrat Josh Shapiro by over 14 points, almost triple the margin of the Senate race.

Reviewing the results of the election, the impact of candidate quality was felt around the country. I am of the opinion that it was just as crucial to the Democratis’ overperformance as the issue of abortion in many key races. If Republicans want to see success, they’d do well to nominate some of the less deranged members of their party in the next election cycle, especially for their presidential challenger.