Is it Dr. Mehmet Oz’s fault that the “red wave” expected by many Republicans didn’t materialize on Election Day? Did the Pennsylvania Senate candidate violate the physician’s Hippocratic Oath — “first, do no harm” — by inflicting severe damage to his own party’s electoral fortunes?
You might think so, given the tenor of many post-election analyses. One of the main storylines of this year’s campaign has depicted a dramatic tension between a fundamentally favorable national climate for the Republican Party on one hand, and on the other, a weak slate of individual nominees foisted on GOP leaders by misguided primary voters.
Oz, who was easy to view as a celebrity dilettante suddenly parachuting into politics — and the state of Pennsylvania — from elsewhere, became perhaps the most frequently cited example of Republicans’ candidate recruitment problems. But fellow Senate nominees Herschel Walker of Georgia, Blake Masters of Arizona and Don Bolduc of New Hampshire, as well as gubernatorial candidates like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and Tudor Dixon in Michigan, struck political analysts as flawed standard-bearers for the Republican Party.
