The Most Misleading Number About the Tea Party and the Senate
David Weigel is right in his latest piece: the Tea Party is not the problem, it’s just the most visible symptom of their desperation. When things break badly it’s never just one thing and people looking for one part to replace or fix in the GOP are searching in vain. There are too many little things that all add up to a trend of increasing defeats.
In the first four, they nominated current or former Republican legislators, not Tea Party candidates. In Wisconsin, they nominated a former governor who defeated Tea Party candidates in the primary. In Connecticut, they nominated a multi-millionaire who ran to the left. And in Maine, they nominated a fairly centrist Republican who tried, and failed, to win a three-way race against a Democrat and an Independent supported by Democrats. As Ramesh Ponnuru keeps writing, most GOP Senate candidates, even in places like Texas and Montana, ran behind Mitt Romney.
The gaffe/Tea Party theory of Republican defeat is just too pat, too easy.
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