Expert: GOP's 2022 strategy 'doomed' with Trump-approved 'family values' candidates

Republicans are feeling good about their chances in next year's midterm elections after Glenn Youngkin's win in the Virginia gubernatorial race, but one conservative doesn't see the same formula working for every GOP candidate.

Youngkin fashioned himself as an advocate for parents against overhyped claims about anti-racism lessons and transgender students, and Republicans are confident that strategy will work in other races in 2022, but The Bulwark columnist Amanda Carpenter said some high-profile GOP candidates are carrying too much baggage to pull that off.

"Some of the highest-profile GOP primary candidates for the 2022 races have a history of allegations of violence against women," Carpenter writes. "Herschel Walker, Eric Greitens, and Sean Parnell are all considered serious contenders to win the Republican nominations for Senate seats in, respectively, Georgia, Missouri, and Pennsylvania. Each of them has been accused of aggressively threatening and violating women in their lives."

"If they win their party's nominations," she added, "it may complicate life for the aspiring Youngkins of 2022."

Walker has admitted that he has considered killing himself and a man who was late delivering a car he had ordered, but his ex-wife claimed that he once held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her, and an ex-girlfriend said he threatened to shoot her in a murder-suicide killing.

"None of these incidents have been dealbreakers for Walker's candidacy," Carpenter writes, "which is a telling bar of behavior for what the supposedly post-Trump Republican party is willing to accept from candidates."

Greitens is running for U.S. Senate after resigning as Missouri governor over sexual assault allegations, and while he hasn't yet won Donald Trump's endorsement like Walker, combat veteran Parnell has in his race for Pennsylvania's Senate seat -- despite graphic allegations of spousal and child abuse by his estranged wife.

Trump also endorsed former White House adviser Max Miller for a House seat in Ohio, despite his own former press secretary Stephanie Grisham directly telling him that Miller had assaulted her.

"It may be the case that after being conditioned to rationalize Trump's 'grab 'em by the pussy' video and defending Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing, Republicans no longer flinch over allegations of violence against women," Carpenter writes.