Actually, she won the primary, so the people spoke. The RNC gives us candidates like Chris Shays. We'd have more of his kind if we depended on the committes to nominate people.
: sigh : Your complete lack of perspective is depressing.
Harris won the primary, true, but with a minority of the vote against three nobody challengers, because unfortunately, too many candidates who were stronger in the general election (and, I might add, either as conservative, or close to has conservative as Harris), believed that the irrational section of the base would vote for her anyway just because they liked her, not paying attention to the fact that she was an almost certain loser in the general. Tom Rooney, Allen Bense, Tom Galligher, and several others could and would have ran, and could have beaten Nelson, unlike Harris.
It turns out, that perception was wrong, she could have been beaten in the primary, most Republicans were not as irrational as the Harris Kool-Aid drinkers around here are, but don't just pretend that she had some hard fought primary and won. She won a pathetic 48% of the vote with 100% name ID and no serious opposition.
And Chris Shays comes from a district that gave Kerry 55% of the vote, and he's won in it for quite a while. Harris came from a district that gave about 60% of it's vote to Bush, and never won more then 55%.