In a year in which the sitting Democratic president’s approval ratings can barely crack 40% on a good day, Republicans’ nominee for Senate from Pennsylvania is blowing it.
The problem isn’t that the Pennsylvania candidate is actually from New Jersey. It’s not that the supposed “Make America Great Again” candidate is actually Turkish, and it’s not that “Dr. Oz” is an inauthentic doctor — quite the contrary. Mehmet Oz was once one of the world’s premier cardiothoracic surgeons.
Rather, the telegenic TV doc, capable of charming the sort of suburban women for decades that the GOP needs right now to recoup the Keystone State, does not seem to want to actually become a senator.
Oz has been unjustly smeared as ostentatious and out of touch, but that’s not his problem. The real issue is that he has accomplished so little despite being handed a clown for an opponent, who additionally had to take months off of the campaign trail to recover from a life-threatening stroke.
During the GOP primary recount, Oz should have been fighting for his political life and smoothing over the divisions sown by a contentious primary. Instead, he vacationed in Palm Beach until June 9. Then, Oz jetted off to a second vacation in Ireland at the end of June. Donald Trump is reportedly unhappy with the candidate he carried over the finish line for only returning to the campaign trail in July.
Pennsylvanians may tolerate a carpetbagger. They may tolerate a candidate who’s light on policy, especially when the alternative is a barely sentient stroke victim who’s been living on his family’s dime for his entire adult life. But what they cannot tolerate is the worst political video I have ever seen:
He’s the most radical candidate in the country. pic.twitter.com/Z2jr8yowos
— Dr. Mehmet Oz (@DrOz) August 15, 2022
You may absolutely loathe what Dr. Oz did to the state of television, but you must remember that he was a master at it. He earned eight Emmy Awards for his talk show, including five as a producer. This auditory, visual, and intellectual insult of a campaign ad is his way of saving the nation from a Senate controlled by Kamala Harris.
This leads me to assume the worst: Oz, a professional television producer and personality nationally renowned for his ability to connect with audiences, simply does not want to win this race.
Prior to his political flirtation, Dr. Oz was a bonafide celebrity, a multimillionaire man-crush of millions of wine moms. He owned 10 houses, including two Manhattan condos and a seaside mansion in Florida. But more importantly, he had the sort of high-society status that earned his invitations to the Met Gala. Would he really trade red carpets in Manhattan for squabbling with Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer?
Until Oz steps up and proves himself the sort of candidate I was foolish enough to believe could win, we can only assume he doesn’t want to downgrade his first-class lifestyle to the swamp of the United States Senate.
