Republicans should have won the Senate easily, but they nominated really bad candidates
by Timothy P. Carney, Senior Columnist |
November 09, 2022 06:56 AM
There’s a lot of noise as these midterm results flow in, and a few unsettled races at the moment, but this much is clear: Republicans would control the Senate next year had they stuck to nominating good candidates. Instead, typical of the Tea Party-to-Trump Era, Republicans in many key states nominated people who were patently unfit for office.
It goes back to the Massie Theorem. Rep. Thomas Massie explained the Tea Party after the 2016 election.
"All this time," Massie said, "I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul-searching, I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas. They were voting for the craziest son of a b**** in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class.”
Nominating the craziest son of a b**** in the race is not a formula for winning governing majorities.
Here’s the raw math:
Republicans, as of 5 a.m. Wednesday, control 48 seats in the Senate, with four states outstanding. (Technically, Alaska is still outstanding, but it is undecided between two Republican candidates.) Republican Ron Johnson will probably win reelection in Wisconsin. That means the GOP would need to win two of the final three races — outstanding contests in Nevada and Arizona, and a likely runoff in Georgia — to control the Senate. So, the odds are decent that Republicans end up with 49 or 50 seats, which is 1 or 2 seats short of Senate control.
Republicans should have won the Georgia Senate race easily this year. They also should have won Pennsylvania.
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