Free Republic

Last Novem­ber, I spent a week in Ken­tucky to cov­er one of the most-loathed Re­pub­lic­ans on the bal­lot that year. Matt Bev­in, an am­bi­tious, tea-party-ori­ented busi­ness­man who had chal­lenged Sen­ate Minor­ity Lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nell in a 2014 Sen­ate primary, was now the GOP’s gubernat­ori­al stand­ard-bear­er in the biggest race in the coun­try. Mc­Con­nell’s ad­visers tried to pre­vent Bev­in from win­ning a di­vided primary. After he se­cured the nom­in­a­tion, Re­pub­lic­an in­siders openly dis­missed his chances of win­ning the gen­er­al elec­tion; they were ex­as­per­ated that he nev­er listened to the party es­tab­lish­ment for ad­vice. Demo­crats be­lieved the preelec­tion polls show­ing their nom­in­ee,...