Tidal waves, historic gains, and “damned fool idealistic crusades,” Part 2

By Cliff Smith

Why did Republicans lose several high-profile Senate and governor’s races, and a couple of House races that they seemed likely to win?  The answer is multifold, but essentially comes down to two things: the wave was not equally high in all places, and candidates matter. A lot.

The wave was not sufficiently high in every region to carry Republicans to victory. In New England and the West Coast, Republicans made substantial gains in terms of absolute vote shares, but with the exception of Jaime Herrera in Washington’s 3rd Congressional District and several races in New Hampshire, Republicans scored few actual victories, losing competitive governor’s races in Oregon, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island, and losing Senate races in California, Connecticut and Washington in addition to some scattered house races.  Scott Brown’s earlier victory in Massachusetts, some polls on the west coast, proved to be misleading.

And despite the wave effect, GOP candidates weren’t all strong enough to prevail in their respective races. Take the Senate race in Nevada, for example. Reid thumped tea party candidate Sharron Angle by a relatively comfortable 5% even though he had been written off by insiders in both political parties for well over a year. Likewise, in Deleware tea party darling Christine O’Donnell got blown out of the water. And in Colorado, Ken Buck lost the Senate race, even though Republicans easily picked up two seats in the House in his state.

The media has tried to portray this as a failure of the tea party.  This is partially true.  While some tea party candidates did poorly where “establishment” candidate would likely have done much better.  However, some candidates with similar backgrounds and tea party support, such as Marco Rubio in Florida and Rand Paul in Kentucky, did very well. Finally, Pat Toomey, a tea party favorite before there was a tea party, won a Senate race in a blue-leaning state, even if by a narrow margin.

What separated winners from losers was not tea party ideology or support. Instead, it was the candidates themselves.  Christine O’Donnell was an unqualified kook.  Everybody who actually looked into her background and previous statements knew it.  She won the primary because voters saw attacks on her background as an attack on the conservative grassroots itself.  While animus toward the grass roots may have been the attitude of some of her detractors, it certainly wasn’t for all or even most.  She lost because she was unelectable, and she was unelectable because of her complete lack of a record of doing much of anything but suing former employers and running unsuccessfully for office and then claiming persecution.

Sharron Angle ran the single least disciplined, least organized statewide campaign in the country.  She never even attempted to mend fences with those groups who didn’t back her in the primary nor did she make a credible effort to reach out to moderates in any meaningful way beyond saying she wasn’t Harry Reid.  This was a function of the candidate herself and her confidents.

Finally, Ken Buck failed on two fronts, one, by never repairing relationships with other Republicans defeated in the primary, and two, for getting wildly off message and spending far too much time talking about social issues and defending against wildly outrageous attacks on his record as district attorney.  Unlike O’Donnell and even Angle, his resume was not unimpressive and he was a very credible candidate.  He lost because voters didn’t trust him personally.

There are other examples, but the result is consistent:  When candidates are  viewed by the electorate as being too unqualified, too inexperienced, or, as Obi Wan Kenobi might say, prone to going off on some “damned fool idealistic crusade,”  voters aren’t going to support them, regardless of if they agree with the Republican candidates basic message or are unhappy with the Democrats.  Virtually every time a Republican candidate got tagged with one or more of these labels, they lost in spite of serious flaws in their Democratic opponents.

That should be the lesson learned from the election.  The Republican message is currently popular, and will likely remain popular through the 2012 election.  But it won’t win the day if the electorate, in spite of what it thinks about the direction the other side is taking us, doesn’t trust the candidate carrying the message.  Remember that in the 2012 presidential primaries in particular.  It will likely decide if Obama gets another term or not.

Click here for Part 1.