Those of us who consider ourselves Tea Partiers need to acknowledge that the movement has resulted in some studs-Rubio, Paul, Toomey eg-as well as some duds-O’Donnell, Angle eg.
I prefer that the risk of this continue; I’d rather lose a few than maintain the GOP establishment status quo.
I know we are on side, but somehow Murdock is a grand failure, but no one talks about Connie Mack, Tommy Thompson, and George Allen who all lost easy races. They were all old guard, safe choices that the ‘establishment’ wanted over newcomers who would have been more conservative and responsive to the base.
Mourdock was an easy win if he didn’t make one mistake. He blew it in message discipline, but he was already a statewide office holder and should have won easily.
In a bigger issue...whoever was responsible for these Senate campaign messaging needs to be run out of town...all of the above should have walked easily into office. Yes, the presidential race was the main driver for voters, but in almost all the cases above, the the Senate candidate lagged Romney by a decent margin. The Senate failures this time can’t be tied to any one type of candidate, it was a universal failure.