Less than a week out from the midterm elections, Georgia’s Senate race is distressingly close. Despite not being able to form cohesive thoughts, spouting weird, easily debunkable lies (like, for example, that he was his high school’s valedictorian or that he works with the FBI) or the fact that the “family values” guy has multiple secret children and allegedly pressured multiple ex-girlfriends to have abortions—somehow, he’s still close to neck and neck with incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock.
According to a new profile from the Washington Post, Walker is leaning in hard to win over the white evangelical base in Georgia’s suburbs. And apparently, it’s working, despite Warnock being an actual reverend. That does make sense, though, since the “Christian values” those white suburban evangelicals described caring the most about include things like banning abortion and curbing what one voter described as an “over-acceptance” of “homosexual rights”
In order to protect their ability to engage in oppressive bigotry at a federal level, these voters are having to bury their heads in the sand and ignore a lot of things about Walker. They’ve been constructing their own narratives, removed from reality, to explain away Walker’s actions—like saying thsoe abortions he allegedly paid for were in the past, and that we all make mistakes when we’re young. They say this despite the fact that Walker was 47 years old when one woman says he pressured her into getting an abortion, which he also allegedly paid for.
Walker himself has been milking this narrative. “He has focused on the notion of redemption, especially when confronted about his past behavior, including accusations of domestic violence and failing to publicly acknowledge and support his out-of-wedlock children,” writes the Post.
Except Walker does done exactly nothing to earn that redemption. He’s continued to (allegedly) lie about his past, twisting his own story more and more with every call-out. He’s even used his demand for unearned grace against Senator Warnock, calling him “a pastor who doesn’t even believe in redemption.”
Warnock has stayed largely quiet about his opponent, letting news coverage of Walker stand in for attack ads, since Walker basically just keeps attacking him. But he did recently say that the Republican “lies about the most basic facts of his life,” asking, “If we can’t trust him to tell the truth about his life, how can we trust him to protect our lives and our families and our children and our jobs and our future?”
That seems like a valid question! But apparently, according to Walker and those desperate Republican suburban evangelicals, calling out those repeated lies is simply evidence that Warnock isn’t willing to accept an apology that was never given and a plea for redemption that was never made.
(image: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)
