[Old Retired Army Guy]

We blew taking control of the Senatae in 2010 because of bad candidates. We did it again in 2012. When are we going to quit shooting ourselves in the foot?

[chimera]

Good to see someone sees the truth. We threw away two winnable Senate seats in 2010 (NV and DE) with lousy candidates (lousy in the sense of politically stupid, not knowing when to keep their mouths shut), and two this year. That is not to say these candidates stood for bad ideas or held to principles that were wrong. They were just lousy from a political strategy viewpoint. Number one rule in politics is, don't hand your opponent a club that they can beat you over the head with. Saying stupid things in a political campaign is the surest way to defeat. These four Senate races are textbook cases for that.

[kevkrom]

We blew taking control of the Senatae in 2010 because of bad candidates. We did it again in 2012. When are we going to quit shooting ourselves in the foot?

I'm getting really annoyed by the doom-and-gloomers. The TEA party had an amazing amount of success in 2010, but let's focus on the handful of races that went poorly instead, shall we? Because, anything less than 100% victory means the whole movement is flawed, right?

From what I recall of the Missouri primary, there were three good conservatives running, and any of them would have been acceptable to the base. Akin won, but after he stepped in in, and then doubled down, he would have been wise to have withdrawn in favor of one of the others. He didn't and the result is history. No telling if either of the others would have won, of course.

But the original selection process went fine. Politicians are people too (all evidence to the contrary). They make mistakes. But an individual politician's foul-up isn't a reason to invalidate the philosophy that got them nominated or elected.