The leadership, although temporary, during the shutdown is what paved the way to this victory. Polls always take a temporary toll, but the outcome is what’s important. The owners of NFL teams and the players both chose to strike despite public sentiment, and what comes out of it the best deal possible for both sides and a product those same fans spend billions on to watch games, buy jerseys and travel to games. It’s a necessary evil to have those standoffs.
Just the same, the shutdown cemented in voters’ eyes the Republican opposition to Obamacare. When Obamacare website failed, it was clear who was responsible. When prices went up, when plans were lost and when doctors became unavailable, it was a clear who ‘owned it’.
What was the first thing the left did when the website failed? Started sullying the waters that this was a Republican idea, a Romney idea, something republicans pushed for. All lies, but the public eats up lies. This lie couldn’t stick because most everyone knew that we went to great lengths to prevent this disaster.
I am not sure Barone actually has all of his facts right here. We won some Senate seats with the strong fighters like last cycles. Sasse and Ernst come to mind. We didn’t go to battle with more ‘reasonable’ candidates any more than 2010 and 2012. We won seats back with temperate guys like Dan Coats in Indiana and others in 2010, too. We frankly won almost nothing in 2012 other than Cruz. The myth that candidates were better this time doesn’t hold much water. The Republican incumbents stayed for another election and won primaries. In NC, we were not even expecting Tillis to win a race that should have been a slam dunk. In most cases, I think a sack of potatoes could have won most of these races just by showing up and not talking about ‘legitimate’ rape. I do credit the party for having much improved candidate training this cycle. It seemed to have a good result, as did the improvements in GOTV. If we had some of this in place 2 years earlier, we would have won Florida, possibly Virginia, and probably 4 additional Senate seats (both tea party and establishment candidates who got beat would have benefited. All of the above failed in 2012)
2012 was the ORCA disaster, lots of room to improve on. Nuf' said.
I do see his point about having better candidates, but I think they were more disciplined. For the first time since I can remember, the GOP did not have any unforced errors, which are usually jumped on by the media an applied with a wide brush to every Republicans (think Todd Akin from MO).