Friday morning, former congressman Joe Walsh ended his Republican presidential campaign where he started it: on CNN. The liberal television network is not only where Walsh started and ended his campaign — it’s seemingly where he spent most of his time “campaigning.”
With his long history of making racist, homophobic, and Islamophobic statements, Walsh was always a bizarre vehicle for Never Trumpers to pour their hopes and dreams into. Even more strangely, Walsh was an enthusiastic supporter of President Trump up until 2018. Walsh claims his come-to-Jesus moment happened after watching Trump get along with Russian dictator Vladamir Putin at the July 2018 Helsinki summit. (Walsh claims this despite the fact that he continued to share pro-Trump memes on social media until October of 2018.)
Walsh got into the 2020 race at the urging of prominent Never Trumper Bill Kristol. This was always an odd pairing, as Walsh had previously described Kristol as a “twit” and “irrelevant.” It wasn’t bound for success.
Walsh started his campaign unloading on Trump, something the liberal media lapped up. And after it became clear a handful of states were canceling their Republican primaries or caucuses, Walsh turned his ire on the Republican Party itself. In September, Walsh called the Republican Party a “cult” and promised to take his campaign directly to the voters:
“We’re going to take our campaign directly to Republican voters — and, I’ll add, in all 50 states. We’re going to campaign in all 50 states. We’re going to campaign in South Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, and Kansas because I believe if we let these Republican voters know that the president of the United States just took away their right to vote, they’ll march on the headquarters of their state parties to get that right to vote back.”
The whole “taking it directly to the people” stage of his campaign lasted for exactly one state.
During Monday night’s Republican Iowa caucuses, Walsh received just roughly 1% of the vote. The humiliating finish prompted him to pull the plug on his quixotic campaign less than a week later in glorious fashion — on CNN, of course. While making his exit, Walsh claimed that Trump was “the greatest threat to this country right now” and vowed to support any Democrat, even self-described socialist Bernie Sanders, over Trump in November. Clearly, Walsh is not a serious conservative by any stretch of the imagination. Increasingly, he seems not even in touch with reality.
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In the end, the problem for Walsh and the rest of the Never Trumpers is that their real beef isn’t with Trump or the GOP establishment — their beef is with Republican voters. Polling shows Trump has a nearly 95% approval rating with the men and women who make up the Republican Party. It’s these voters who are the real strength behind Trump.
The vast majority of Republicans, myself included, are thrilled with Trump and supportive of his policies. Never Trumpers might not get it, but as long as Republican voters stand behind this president, no challenge to Trump, not from Walsh, David French, Bill Weld, Evan McMullin, or just about anyone else, will go anywhere.
It’s time for Never Trumpers such as Walsh to recognize that it wasn’t the Republican Party or the president that left them behind. Republican voters did.
Christopher Barron (@ChrisRBarron) is the president of Right Turn Strategies and a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
