From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression with me, Jerry Baker from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

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This week, the 2022 midterm elections are just about in the books with the result of the Senate

runoff in Georgia. Incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock defeated the Republican candidate,

the former football star, Herschel Walker. Now, Walker had been backed, of course, by former

President Donald Trump,

and his defeat completed a pretty remarkable string of losses for candidates across the country

who had endorsed Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, the result in Georgia

means that for the first time since 1962, Democrats made gains in the Senate in the midterm

elections while they controlled the White House. So what happened? Was Trump

to blame? Or, as some Republicans have begun to argue, is there a wider leadership problem for the

party in the Senate, the House, and the Republican apparatus itself? Did Mitch McConnell,

Senate minority leader and other leading figures in the party, failed to support candidates like

Walker with enough energy and financial support? Well, to talk about the lessons of the elections, I'm joined this

week by Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida. Scott beat an incumbent Democrat to win election

to the Senate in 2018, having previously served two terms as Florida's governor. Last month, he challenged

Mitch McConnell for leadership of the Senate Republican caucus.

Now, he was beaten back comfortably by the incumbent, but he vowed to continue to press for change

in the Republican Party. So to talk all about that now, Senator Scott joins me. So we saw the

result of the Georgia Senate runoff this week. Republican Herschel Walker lost to the incumbent

...