To play devil's advocate here: Being a good talker is a political advantage, but if Walker is elected, it would not surprise me if he turns out to be the best Senator of the three.
One piece of evidence for this is actually Walker's infrastructure answer. I think the answer has much to commend it both substantively and politically.
Substantively, it's arguably a somewhat responsible answer. I think a serious person probably would study a bill rather differently if he or she were actually going to vote on it. In this instance, there are also likely some considerations that would come into play if it was a real vote that do not go purely to the merits of the bill but that a Senator would need to assess seriously in a way an intelligent bystander (let alone a political candidate) wouldn't. For example, even if he had some doubts about it, a Senator would want to know what the bill means for his State before actually voting. He might also want to make a solid assessment whether Manchin and/or Sinema and/or some Republicans really needed it to pass in order to feel comfortable opposing Build Back Better. He might also want to have a sense whether his vote was necessary to enable or prevent passage. All of these kinds of prudential considerations seem perfectly reasonable for a Senator to take into account and are hard to assess if one is not already a Senator. I suspect something like them underlies Walker's non-answer answer.
I also think the answer is some evidence for Sen. McConnell's assessment of him, as I don't think it actually matters what Walker thinks of the infrastructure bill as a practical matter, and there were certainly people pretty would up about it on both sides of the question in the party. So why fan the flames on it by taking a position one way or the other?
I agree with Paul's take here. It has never made sense to me how/why Herschel Walker would run for Senate and why anyone would vote for him. He's inarticulate, uninformed and a B or C list "celebrity". He DOES have name recognitiion. And, yes, I'm aware that I just described DJT''s qualifications in 2016 too.
For whatever reason, the other candidates on the Republican side [for the chance to challenge Raphael Warnock in the general election] - Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, former Trump administration official and Navy veteran Latham Saddle, retired brigadier general Jon McColumn, contractor and Air Force veteran Kelvin King, and former state Rep. Josh Clark - were not reassuring to McConnell, perhaps mostly because they didn’t have Herschel Walker’s name ID.
Unlike the situation of voting for President (when we can see how disastrous the strategy of voting for Biden only because he was not Trump, completely ignoring the risks that Biden’s cognitive decline as a Commander-in-Chief would be disastrous), voting for Senator is a whole different homework problem. The key factor really is whether the candidate can successfully eject Democrat Warnock from the seat. Repubs need to at least get to 51 to be able to set the agenda and control the confirmation process. Moreover, gone are the days when any significant number of Dems would not infrequently cross the aisle to vote with Repubs on any issue.
My guess is that McConnell learned from the experiences of watching the previous campaigns of Loeffler and David Perdue and decided that Walker likely had the best chance....especially since Trump liked him.
To play devil's advocate here: Being a good talker is a political advantage, but if Walker is elected, it would not surprise me if he turns out to be the best Senator of the three.
One piece of evidence for this is actually Walker's infrastructure answer. I think the answer has much to commend it both substantively and politically.
Substantively, it's arguably a somewhat responsible answer. I think a serious person probably would study a bill rather differently if he or she were actually going to vote on it. In this instance, there are also likely some considerations that would come into play if it was a real vote that do not go purely to the merits of the bill but that a Senator would need to assess seriously in a way an intelligent bystander (let alone a political candidate) wouldn't. For example, even if he had some doubts about it, a Senator would want to know what the bill means for his State before actually voting. He might also want to make a solid assessment whether Manchin and/or Sinema and/or some Republicans really needed it to pass in order to feel comfortable opposing Build Back Better. He might also want to have a sense whether his vote was necessary to enable or prevent passage. All of these kinds of prudential considerations seem perfectly reasonable for a Senator to take into account and are hard to assess if one is not already a Senator. I suspect something like them underlies Walker's non-answer answer.
I also think the answer is some evidence for Sen. McConnell's assessment of him, as I don't think it actually matters what Walker thinks of the infrastructure bill as a practical matter, and there were certainly people pretty would up about it on both sides of the question in the party. So why fan the flames on it by taking a position one way or the other?
I agree with Paul's take here. It has never made sense to me how/why Herschel Walker would run for Senate and why anyone would vote for him. He's inarticulate, uninformed and a B or C list "celebrity". He DOES have name recognitiion. And, yes, I'm aware that I just described DJT''s qualifications in 2016 too.
For whatever reason, the other candidates on the Republican side [for the chance to challenge Raphael Warnock in the general election] - Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, former Trump administration official and Navy veteran Latham Saddle, retired brigadier general Jon McColumn, contractor and Air Force veteran Kelvin King, and former state Rep. Josh Clark - were not reassuring to McConnell, perhaps mostly because they didn’t have Herschel Walker’s name ID.
Unlike the situation of voting for President (when we can see how disastrous the strategy of voting for Biden only because he was not Trump, completely ignoring the risks that Biden’s cognitive decline as a Commander-in-Chief would be disastrous), voting for Senator is a whole different homework problem. The key factor really is whether the candidate can successfully eject Democrat Warnock from the seat. Repubs need to at least get to 51 to be able to set the agenda and control the confirmation process. Moreover, gone are the days when any significant number of Dems would not infrequently cross the aisle to vote with Repubs on any issue.
My guess is that McConnell learned from the experiences of watching the previous campaigns of Loeffler and David Perdue and decided that Walker likely had the best chance....especially since Trump liked him.
https://thehill.com/news/campaign/3507012-herschel-walker-mad-at-trump-over-remarks-about-senate-bid/