Eric Greitens is the worst of the worst. He earns the title just by virtue of the credible sexual assault allegations that drove him out of the Missouri governor’s office in 2018.
But wait, there’s more! You want chameleonlike hypocrisy? This is a former Democrat and humanitarian activist who turned into a fire-breathing right-winger the millisecond it served his political ambitions. You want campaign finance shenanigans? Greitens was criminally charged for that, until his resignation as governor made it go away. You want testosterone-addled stunt-politics? Go to YouTube and check out his infamous “machine gun” campaign ad from 2016.
It really is difficult to imagine anyone more demonstrably unfit for public office than Eric Greitens.
And I’ll cast my vote for him on Aug. 2.
That’s the day Missouri voters will go to the polls to pick the Republican and Democratic nominees for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. Astonishingly, some polls show Greitens leading the GOP pack — an indication that Missouri’s Republican base is in orbit around Jupiter or something.
This has the national party in a panic, because back on planet Earth, Greitens is still widely viewed as a crooked creep. One new poll finds that, if the general election were held today, Greitens would edge out top Democrat Lucas Kunce by just 4 percentage points — barely outside the poll’s margin for error — with almost 20% undecided. That’s a terrible showing for a Republican former governor against an unknown Democrat in a deep-red state that Donald Trump won by more than 15 points in 2020.
Which is why, after some soul-searching, I’m planning to vote for Greitens in the primary, and will encourage it for others who understand how important it is to prevent the GOP from retaking the Senate. If helping Republicans nominate a potentially unelectable Senate candidate accomplishes that, it will be a ballot well-cast.
Such crossover voting is legal in Missouri, which has open primaries. Some want to change that so voters could only vote in their own parties’ primaries. The argument is that strategically participating in the other party’s primary (known as “tactical voting”) is a form of political sabotage, and not what voting is supposed to be about.
I’m actually somewhat sympathetic to that argument, and very uncomfortable about casting a vote for someone like Greitens — not in hopes that he will win the office, but that he and his party will ultimately lose it. That level of cynicism doesn’t come naturally to me. At least, it didn’t used to.
But the urgency of preventing a GOP Senate takeover this year goes beyond mere policy issues. It’s about the fear, which even serious conservatives are expressing lately, that today’s Republican Party is a threat to democracy itself. What else can you say about a party that continues to support an ex-president who tried to overturn a valid election? A party that still refuses to acknowledge that the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was an attempted coup against more than 80 million voters? A party that even now is busily overhauling state election laws with an eye toward making such coups easier to pull off in the future?
There are downsides (beyond nausea) to walking into a polling place and marking a primary ballot for Greitens. There is, of course, the strong possibility that, should he win the GOP nomination in August, he will go on to win the general election in November.
But suppose the worst happens and Missouri does end up with a Sen. Greitens? It’s not like the other Republican options include any Abe Lincolns or Teddy Roosevelts.
Notable GOP candidates include state Attorney General Eric Schmitt, whose campaign strategy has been to sue school districts for trying to protect students and teachers from the coronavirus, in hopes the anti-science right will love him for it. I may be cynical these days, but at least my cynicism isn’t endangering lives.
There’s Mark McCloskey, the ambulance-chasing lawyer whose only qualification for office is that he stood on his lawn in bare feet brandishing a semi-automatic rifle at peaceful protesters, and then acted like he’d single-handedly invaded Normandy.
Then there’s U.S. Rep. Billy Long, whose whole Trumpier-than-thou shtick has long been the very definition of pathetic — until he redefined the word last week by whining to the national media about Sen. Josh Hawley’s decision to endorse Rep. Vicky Hartzler for the Senate instead of him.
Hartzler might be the least-objectionable of the GOP candidates, if only because, while others were baying at the moon in defense of an indefensible president, she was mainly keeping her head down. Ostrich-like. Sen. Blunt-like.
You know what’s missing from this field? Any hint of courage in an era that demands it. There’s not a Liz Cheney or an Adam Kinzinger in the bunch. Instead, there is a bunch of Trump sycophants, or Trump-dodgers, and nothing else.
So, yes: I will cast my vote for the machine-gun toting, campaign-law-violating, alleged-mistress-assaulting, pretend-conservative demagogue, in hopes he can achieve the near-impossible and send a Missouri Democrat to the Senate.
And should Greitens end up in the Senate instead, making Missouri look still more ridiculous while further proving that a partywide psychosis now grips the GOP — so be it. Heck, Hawley can’t be expected to carry the whole load himself.
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