Fox News host Tucker Carlson began his monologue on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” with a message to Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz. As I reported on Friday, Carlson has been attempting to alert the GOP ahead of the November midterm elections, as Democrats seem to be gaining momentum in Senate races.
Carlson began his monologue on Friday, saying:
“Last night we told you the sad and bewildering story of Dr. Oz, a man with absolutely everything going for him — talent, decency, charm, money, name recognition, all the right endorsements — who is nevertheless losing by a big margin as a Republican in what should be a Republican wave election to a radical and incompetent Democratic lieutenant governor who has presided over the decline of the state and who, by the way, also has had a stroke and can no longer speak in complete sentences. That’s happening right now.”
Carlson was surprised that all signs point to Fetterman winning in November. He added that Oz is a bad candidate.
“Dr. Oz is getting crushed by a stroke victim who was already crazy. It’s bizarre. The question is, why is this happening? We spent some time on the phone the other day calling around to various smart political people to find out why it’s happening and we heard a lot of theories, almost all of which boil down to Dr. Oz is a bad candidate.
He continued, speaking about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s comments about the GOP’s chances of winning the majority in the Senate, saying:
“Mitch McConnell, who is in charge of electing more Republicans to the Senate, gave virtually the same explanation yesterday at a Kentucky Chamber of Commerce lunch. ‘Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.’ In other words, it’s not my fault they sent me bad candidates. OK, but before we accept that, before we accept that a Republican just can’t win at a time when Democrats have completely discredited themselves, it’s worth pausing to ask exactly what this means. What is a bad candidate? Well, there are no bad candidates just like there are no bad dogs. There’s bad owners. There are no bad candidates. There are just candidates who are running on the wrong things, candidates who are talking about issues that people don’t deeply care about.”
Carlson noted what it would take for candidates like Oz to win their races, and he mentioned Trump’s win in 2016:
“A good candidate is the opposite of that. A good candidate is a candidate who promises to fix the problems that voters worry about most. Candidates like that tend to win elections because the message is bigger than the man. A candidate with a powerful message can overcome virtually any obstacle from multiple bankruptcies to universal media hostility to a dull, orange skin tone.”
He said that the most significant issue voters are worried about is law and order, as brazen crimes are being committed across the country:
“Consider Pennsylvania, the state where Dr. Oz is now losing. What do voters in Pennsylvania care about most? We haven’t seen the most recent polls, but we would guess law and order is at the very top of that list. Why do we think that?
“Here’s one thing that actually is happening and actually matters — something that everybody sees but that candidates virtually never mention, and that is stealing. Suddenly there’s a huge amount of stealing in the United States. It’s everywhere. That’s a problem because stealing is a crime, a moral crime. In fact, it’s the first crime that most of us learn not to commit as children. Don’t steal. Don’t take what doesn’t belong to you. It’s immoral and it certainly is immoral. Yet somehow in the last few years, our leaders, Democrats mostly, but honestly, to some extent, both parties, our leaders have decided that stealing isn’t really such a big deal. It’s not really a crime, certainly not something we should be worried about.”
Carlson is right. Oz needs to be a better candidate. He needs to do a better job of getting his message across to voters, and focus on issues such as crime. John Fetterman has done nothing but call out Oz every which way. It remains to be seen if the polls are accurate, but currently, Oz is trailing Fetterman by double digits because Fetterman is controlling the narrative that Oz is out of touch and lives in New Jersey. That messaging might change when Oz pushes back during the debates, but as of now, it is not looking good for Oz, and Carlson’s monologue was an important one. The GOP should take what he said seriously before it’s too late and Democrats attempt to expand their Senate majority.