NEW REPORTS: “GOP Fears Senate Debacle” & NRSC Chair Rick Scott Faces “Heightening Pressure” “After Nominating Several Deeply Flawed Candidates”

Two new stories today are highlighting how the “GOP fears [a] Senate debacle” in 2022 “after nominating several deeply flawed candidates” – “heightening pressure on Florida Sen. Rick Scott,“ the chair of the NRSC, as his performance “has drawn questions from fellow Republicans.”

Today’s stories come on the heels of recent reporting featuring Republican strategists describing their candidates as an “island of misfit toys” and admitting they “are growing increasingly nervous” that “there are massive problems on the candidate front.”

See for yourself:

Axios: GOP fears Senate debacle
By Josh Kraushaar and Andrew Solender
July 15, 2022

• Top Republicans, once confident about winning control of the Senate in the midterms, fear they’ll blow it after nominating several deeply flawed candidates in winnable states, according to conversations with GOP strategists, pollsters and other officials.

• What’s happening: In several crucial Senate races, polling, fundraising and news coverage tell a similar story. The Republicans are on the defensive.

• Walker’s own aides [called] the candidate a “serious liability.”

• Oz has been criticized by Fetterman as a “carpetbagger” from New Jersey and has gone dark on the airwaves since emerging from a bruising GOP primary in May.

• Blake Masters… has a lengthy track record of controversial writings, from lamenting American involvement in World War II as a college student to name-checking the Unabomber as an underappreciated thinker in a podcast during his current campaign.

• Masters is also one of the… Republicans to openly embrace a national abortion ban, which could be a liability.

USA TODAY Network – Florida: Rick Scott leads the Republican bid to regain the Senate. Those candidates are struggling.
By John Kennedy
July 15, 2022

• Stumbles by high-profile Republican U.S. Senate candidates are casting a cloud over the party’s chances of regaining control of the chamber this fall, heightening pressure on Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the man in charge of the takeover effort.

• Republican contenders are struggling in Georgia, New Hampshire, Nevada and Arizona, where Scott has promised victories.

• His performance in the job of chair of the NRSC has drawn questions from fellow Republicans, and outright ridicule from Democrats.

• “Rick Scott’s self-indulgent politics and his incompetence at the NRSC have been a gift to Senate Democrats this cycle,” said David Bergstein, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

• Scott is still trying to nuance his “Plan to Rescue America,” which was released in February as an 11-point summary of what his party stand for and immediately attacked by Democrats and even many fellow Republicans for demanding that all Americans pay federal income tax to exhibit they had “skin in the game.”

• The Rescue America plan may be proving more of an albatross.

• With the roster of Republican Senate candidates coming under scrutiny, more attention is being trained on Scott’s recruiting effort.

• Among the more publicized problems for the GOP: Georgia Republican nominee Herschel Walker has acknowledged being the father of three previously undisclosed children… and Pennsylvania nominee Dr. Mehmet Oz, is a celebrity doctor and favorite of former President Donald Trump, who won only after a recount.

See Also: Washington Post: Candidate challenges, primary scars have GOP worried about Senate chances; New York Times: A Bluer Picture; POLITICO: GOP Senate hopefuls adopt a high-risk strategy for November; National Journal: Rick Scott getting rolled as NRSC chairman; Associated Press: Republican ‘unforced errors’ threaten path to Senate control; POLITICO: Senate Republicans’ electability headache. 

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