Herschel Walker, the former football star who is the Republican nominee running for a critical U.S. Senate seat in Georgia, has been a magnet for controversy. First came revelations that his ex-wife accused him of physical abuse and violent threats to the point that a restraining order and a gun-owning ban were placed on Walker. Then came reports that Walker had two additional sons and a daughter than he had not publicly acknowledged after condemning “fatherless” households. Finally, a report emerged last week alleging that Walker impregnated a woman and paid her to have an abortion in 2009. Walker, who as a candidate opposes abortion under any circumstances, initially said he did not know the identity of the accuser. Days later, Walker was forced to acknowledge that he had a child with the woman in 2012.
The Walker abortion story and the timing of it bears resemblance to when The Washington Post obtained behind-the-scenes footage of Donald Trump on Access Hollywood and published it in October 2016. During a taping in 2005, Trump bragged about hitting on a married woman and groping other women. “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” he said. “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” Trump’s campaign looked finished, with some suggesting Trump should drop out and be replaced by running mate Mike Pence, an evangelical favorite. But Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, advised the faith community to stick by Trump. It was impractical to switch candidates so late in the race, he counseled. Reed surmised that the tape, as vulgar as he believed it to be, would be low on the list of voter concerns.
Of course, we know now that Reed’s intuition was correct. In a poll released after the tape’s release, 72 percent of white evangelicals agreed that “an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” Only 30 percent of white evangelicals said that was true five years earlier, during Obama’s presidency. Conservatives who say that “character counts” during Democratic administrations develop amnesia during Republican ones.
We are seeing a similar evangelical movement to rally around Herschel Walker, a Christian who has assiduously courted white evangelicals. Reed, a Georgian, has been vocal in his support for Walker even after the abortion story emerged, as have other leading evangelicals. See this New York Times article. (The race has another interesting religious dimension in that his opponent, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, is senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Martin Luther King Jr.’s former pulpit.) Evangelicals are again excusing behavior that they would swiftly condemn if the candidate had a “D” after their name. But when political power is on the line, we see how little character really counts.
Good to know!