Former Rep. Joe Walsh to battle Trump for GOP nomination

WASHINGTON — Joe Walsh, a former Illinois congressman and Tea Party favorite turned radio talk show host, announced a long-shot challenge Sunday to President Trump for the Republican nomination in 2020, saying the incumbent is “completely unfit” for office and must be denied a second term.

“Somebody needs to step up and there needs to be an alternative” among Republicans, Walsh told ABC’s “This Week,” adding that “the country is sick of this guy’s tantrum. He’s a child. … He lies every time he opens his mouth.”

Already in the race is former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld.

Walsh narrowly won a House seat from suburban Chicago in the 2010 Tea Party wave but lost a 2012 re-election bid and has since hosted a radio talk show. He has a history of making inflammatory statements regarding Muslims and others and declared just before the 2016 election that if Trump lost, “I’m grabbing my musket.”

But he has since soured on Trump, criticizing the president in a recent New York Times column over growth of the federal deficit and calling him “a racial arsonist who encourages bigotry and xenophobia to rouse his base.”

Walsh promises to contest Trump from the right as opposed to Weld, who is regarded as fiscally conservative but socially liberal.

The road ahead for any Republican primary challenger will be difficult. In recent months, Trump’s allies have taken over state parties that control primary elections in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and elsewhere. State party leaders sometimes pay lip service to the notion that they would welcome a primary challenger, as their state party rules usually require, but they are already working to ensure Trump’s re-election.

Polling consistently shows that Trump has the solid backing of an...