Politico reports today that Senate Republicans have let tensions spill into public view over who is to blame for the GOP's inability to take the Senate. "If you think what happened in Delaware is ‘a win’ for the Republican Party then we don’t have a snowball’s chance to win the White House," said South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, who channelled the establishment view. "If you think Delaware was a wake-up call for Republicans than we have shot at doing well for a long time."
RedState editor Erick Erickson fired back on his blog, excoriating the RNC and the NRSC for, in his view, being too heavy-handed in the candidate-selection process and virtually absent in the latter stages of the election. His entire piece is well-worth a read, but here's the key portion:
GOP Senate candidates underperformed their polling at around 3% in most races. Why? Because the NRSC did not fund a ground game operation, nor did the RNC. They either left it to Karl Rove or Haley Barbour. There was not, as in past years, a mass exodus of GOP Hill Staffers from Washington to the ground in swing states.
But there is an even greater, larger point. None of this would have happened had the NRSC not decided to dictate to Republicans in the several states who their Republican candidates should be. Christine O’Donnell’s and Sharron Angle’s wins were largely reactions to what the NRSC was doing.
Compare this with the House campaign body, the NRCC. After getting clobbered over the NY-23 race and Dede Scozzafava, the NRCC took a hands off approach and let local voters choose their candidates. Not the NRSC. It doubled up around the country igniting a civil war with the grassroots — a civil war that would have never happened but their getting into Florida and doubling down.
The NRSC’s argument amounts to telling the world that voters exercising their right to pick their candidates are stupid and Jim DeMint is stupid for siding with the voters.
Where do you come down on this debate?
