Is Herschel Walker the worst candidate the Republicans have ever run? | Jill Filipovic

Republican men can be accused of any number of horrors, and not risk their party's support

It's possible that Herschel Walker is the worst candidate the modern Republican party has ever run for national office, and in an era of conspiracy theorists, Christian nationalists and Donald Trump, that's saying a lot. Walker embodies everything the Republican party has claimed to oppose: violent crime, abortion, homes broken by absentee fathers, race-based affirmative action and straight-up incompetence. And yet no matter what Walker is accused of, up to and including acts many Republicans define as murder, he retains the support of the Republican party, and his race for a Georgia Senate seat remains a tight one.

It's not just that the modern Republican party has accepted as a norm that there should be absolutely zero moral or ethical expectations from the people they run for office. It's that they seem to relish breaking the rules they want to set for others. It's not hypocrisy so much as the celebration of conservative male impunity.

Jill Filipovic is the author of OK Boomer, Let's Talk.