JAMES LEUTZE: In Georgia, GOP offered unqualified Senate candidate to grab power

EDITOR'S NOTE: James Leutze is chancellor emeritus of UNC-Wilmington and was a professor of history at UNC Chapel Hill, specializing in military history. He is author of “Entering North Carolina: Turn Clocks Back 100 Years,” a reflection on the historic connections between North Carolina’s post-Civil War politics and today’s.

I didn't think I had it in me, but I feel some sorrow for Herschel Walker. It's not that I wanted him to win the U.S. Senate race in Georgia, it is more that it's sad to see what he was put through.

In a race where the Republicans used every device to see him robbed of his dignity, after already reducing the minority vote, Republicans put Herschel Walker forward as a candidate well knowing that he was woefully unqualified. In Trump world this is a qualification. But in Herschel Walker they chose a candidate who was truly unaware he would be exposed as the chief attraction in a carnival show. He must have thought his reputation as a football star would shield him against charges scandalous revelations and charges of: soliciting an abortion, spousal abuse, mental instability, ignorance and incompetence.  Armed with arrogance bestowed by years of adulation he gleefully accepted the role of chief attraction in the freak show.· How sad!

And how manipulative of the Georgia Republican Party. They knew what they were doing- putting forth a totally unqualified candidate -- all in the interest of power. Forget the interests of the country just grab onto power (some at least) in the U.S. Senate.

To me, the irony is that this was precisely what the die-hard ex­ confederates accused the Reconstructionists of doing in the 1880s. Let me jog your memory to the first act in this play.

At the end of the Civil War the Lincoln Republicans set out on a path of reconstruction to rebuild the South with one big exception - equal rights for Blacks. This included education, property ownership and biggest of all voting rights. Desperate to sabotage this noble experiment, the Ex-Confederate Democrats of that day used every tool at their disposal, nightriders, the KKK, social intimidation, to keep Blacks from exercising their role as equal citizens.

They also accused the newly enfranchised Blacks and their "white enablers" in Georgia and elsewhere of rampant corruption. White citizens, they claimed, should oppose Reconstruction. they claimed that unqualified Blacks were put up for election by the Reconstructionists who would then "rig" the elections. Those elected would turn a blind eye to graft and corruption enriching their enablers. There were doubtless some cases where this was true, but more often Black candidates won not because of corruption but in races there was a Black majority. True or not, the campaign against Blacks was successful in discrediting them of the 16 Blacks elected to Congress from the former Confederacy and the 600+ elected to local offices.

Back to 2022 and Hershel Walker. Georgia Republicans were trying to play both sides of the old Reconstruction election game: use Blacks to run regardless of qualifications, and at the same time try to suppress the Black vote.

Poor Herschel Walker, whom I am sure knows none of the history. Now he is merely a defeated has been who has been exposed as a naive flawed fool.