Georgia Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker already has the blueprint with which to defeat Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock in their Dec. 6 runoff, one conservative columnist said.
Walker should look to the campaign of New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, who surprisingly made Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul sweat in her bid for reelection in the deep blue state.
Newsmax projected Hochul defeating Zeldin 52.86% to 47.14%.
Zeldin's impressive effort resulted from convincing Republican voters that the election was not about former President Donald Trump and abortion, as much of the mainstream media promoted, Daniel McCarthy wrote in a New York Post opinion column.
"If Republicans listen to the liberal chorus, they'll believe that voters have already decided against them — that they just can't win in this environment," McCarthy, editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review, wrote in Thursday's column.
"And if Republicans buy the premise but not the conclusion, they risk sending a mixed message as they try to appeal to a pro-Trump and anti-abortion base while also reaching for independent voters, especially single women, who are anti-Trump and want abortion to be legal."
McCarthy said Walker needs to avoid "the trap" being set by liberals, progressives, and the media.
"Walker shouldn't fall for it when Democrats bring up his troubled personal history to get him to talk more about abortion," McCarthy wrote. "The issue that maximized turnout for Republicans in New York was crime. That's what will draw out the GOP vote in Georgia, too."
That's because, McCarthy said, Republicans and red-leaning independents who might be divided about Trump and/or abortion "have absolute clarity on crime."
"City voters and suburban women who might otherwise write off the Republican Party pay attention when it talks about the mayhem in our streets — and how Democrats foster more of it," the columnist wrote.
With Republican Gov. Brian Kemp defeating progressive activist Stacey Abrams 53.41% to 45.88 % in this month's midterms, according to Newsmax, McCarthy said it's clear Georgia remains red.
"If Georgia voters give Biden a Senate majority by re-electing Sen. Raphael Warnock, they'll wind up with policies more like Abrams' than Kemp's. And so will the rest of us," McCarthy wrote.
"Even a blue state like New York was moved by Lee Zeldin's tough-on-crime and tough-on-enablers-of-crime message."
A RealClear Politics average shows Walker ahead of Warnock by an average of 1.9 percentage points.
A Walker victory would mean the Senate will remain split evenly along party lines, with Vice President Kamala Harris available to deliver a tiebreaking vote for Democrats.
That would help prevent President Joe Biden from appointing judges.
A Warnock triumph, though, would give Democrats a 51-49 edge and give Biden more power to reshape the federal bench than he has had the past two years.
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