IDIOT OF THE YEAR No. 1: Herschel Walker

2022 is the 12 months Herschel Walker rebranded himself as a generational IDIOT OF THE YEAR expertise. There had been glimpses earlier than, however he showcased his full-range of idiocy in 2022. Every week, the previous UGA and NFL operating again humiliated himself in pursuit of energy and affect he appeared to don’t have any plans to yield it for, past the sheer ambition of all of it. He repeatedly doubled down on his unlucky President Camacho imitation beneath the extreme microscope of operating for one in every of Georgia’s Senate seats, watched his personal son flip in opposition to him, then misplaced (twice, technically, for those who embody the runoff) and returned to a private life left in shambles.

Recruited to run for Raphael Warnock’s Georgia senate seat because the token black candidate in Donald Trump’s obsequious rogues’ gallery of unelectable election-denying candidates, Walker was among the many worst of the worst. Should you lumped collectively a scouting report of the largest Trump-backed losers to run for workplace in the course of the current election cycle, none boast Walker’s collective lousiness.

He’d terrorized his ex-wife, alienated the one son he acknowledged the existence of — denigrating his appears and intelligence — referred to as his then-wife’s genes terrible, probably ran afoul of a number of tax legal guidelines throughout his marketing campaign, and was thought to be a shameless and apparent routine liar to his personal marketing campaign staffers. Nevertheless, what’s regarding is that these traits could have been what whisked him by a GOP major so simply he didn’t even present up at debates so long as he brown-nosed Trump. And that’s simply the preamble to his agonizingly duff common election efficiency artwork.

He represented himself to be a born-again Christian, but hid a number of kids born out of wedlock many years aside from his personal marketing campaign and has reportedly been an absentee father to his kids. These revelations emerged not lengthy after he railed in opposition to fatherless black kids. In his fervor to skewer African-People to attraction for help from a conservative white voting bloc that bristles at any examination of its personal many years of bigotry, he denied the existence of systemic racism. That characteristic was instrumental to the Walker marketing campaign.

Over a summer time during which a conservative Supreme Court docket repealed the precedent set by Roe v. Wade, Herschel Walker had the gall to suggest insane complete abortion bans. Walker did this whereas presumably understanding that the ladies whose abortions he’d paid for would hear this. Ultimately, that’s precisely what occurred as two girls got here ahead with receipts within the type of checks to blast his blatant hypocrisy.

As a campaigner, Walker was a dud. His oratorical expertise had been akin to a fifth grader explaining Cloud Atlas. He in contrast his résumé to Barack Obama’s with out a trace of sarcasm and his coverage experience was in fictional fairy story creatures. In the course of the run-off, Walker fixated on attacking the transgender neighborhood and finally was given chaperones throughout media appearances to maintain him from sticking his foot into his personal mouth.

Issues bought so dire for the Walker marketing campaign that the Republican Lieutenant Governor of Georgia publicly expressed his incapability to to vote for “one of many worst candidates” in GOP historical past. Walker earned his place in infamy and burrowed again beneath the rock he climbed out of, however not earlier than embarrassing the state of Georgia all through 2022.