Cornyn Praises Failed Tea Party Candidates
The Hill reports:
The head of Senate Republicans' campaign efforts contended Thursday that the GOP wouldn't have fared better had some of its preferred candidates survived their primaries and become the party's nominee for the general election.
Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), dismissed the notion that some of the insurgent GOP candidates to have lost on Tuesday — many of whom were aligned with the Tea Party candidate — weren't Republicans' best possible candidate in those races.
"I think the process is such that, of course, you're not going to have a chance to win the general if you can't win the primary," Cornyn said in a post-election conference call. "So that sort of resolves the issue of who the strongest candidate was."
Several of the Republicans who'd won primaries against candidates Cornyn and the NRSC had convinced to run ended up losing their general election on Tuesday. Those candidates include Linda McMahon in Connecticut, Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado — the latter three of whom are associated with the Tea Party.
