On the Matter of Candidate Quality (700 Words)

Since the Republicans lost a Senate seat in President Biden’s midterms (four years after Democrats lost two seats in Trump’s midterms), the words “Candidate Quality” have been making the rounds. Those two words are largely said by the non-Trump and the pro-Establishment wing of the Republican Party in a chiding way to Trump voters as to why the president’s party has 51 Senate seats four years after Trump’s party had 53 seats.

Republicans were not going to run a Senate candidate who is highly impaired due to a stroke, so they know that candidate quality matters. It’s unclear who in the Republican Party claims that nominating for president someone who is visibly confused almost every time he is in public with a record of angry and racist outbursts is the path to victory. Yet, the lecture about “candidate quality” keeps being told.

The Two Words first appeared after the midterm elections of President Obama in 2010. Instead of crediting the Tea Party for driving Republicans to a 63-seat pickup in the House and six seats in the Senate, the wing of the party that lost a combined 14 Senate seats in the previous two elections when Bush was president and John McCain was the presidential nominee kept scolding about Quality. When Republicans lost two senate seats in 2012, the Two Words – rather than blaming the losing ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan – appeared again. Republicans then picked up nine seats in the 2014 midterms with the Tea Party energy still alive. The Establishment boasted that these pickups were a result of Quality Candidates, although most of those wins merely recouped the seats they messed up in 2008 before the Tea Party of Trump were around to be blamed for anything.

In the elections since then, plenty of Establishment candidates lost Senate seats, including two each in Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia in 2020 and one in New Hampshire. The retort to this usually is that Trump being around caused those losses, which is strange because, in many cases, Trump did better than those candidates when he was on the ballot. Besides, if we go by who is in the White House or on top of the ticket, then George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney left the GOP worse off in the Senate than where Republicans are now.

Some of those Establishment losses (in Arizona and Georgia last time around) were candidates picked by Governor appointment, not by primary voters. In Colorado, delegates at a GOP convention squeezed candidates out of the primary ballot, leaving only two candidates, including Trump-bashing Joe O’Dea. He lost the general election by almost 15 points to Michael Bennett as opposed to a much smaller Republican loss in 2016 and a narrow 1.7-point loss in 2010 by Tea Party favorite Ken Buck who was of Bad Quality the establishment griped about back then.

The Trump candidates, however, came about differently. Hershel Walker won 68% of the high-turnout primary vote. Where was Quality to take him on? Claiming that no Quality Candidate tried to run because Republican voters are idiots when Trump endorses is not a winning recipe. “Vote for me, moron.” Dr. Mehmet Oz won less than 32% of the Pennsylvania primary vote despite Trump’s endorsement because there were alternatives. Where was it in Georgia?

What’s more, Dr. Oz won the primary by a margin of only 950 votes among the 1.3 million voters given, yet Quality couldn’t find 951 votes or consolidate the rest 68% to knock Dr. Oz out or mount opposition to Walker. Hardly proof of winning prowess for a general election. Similarly, almost 60% of Republican voters didn’t back Blake Masters. Where was the Establishment Quality to grab up the 60 percent? Strike that. After losing the state’s Senate seat in 2018 and 2020 and abandoning Masters in the general election to own Trump, their advice about winning AZ is not in demand.

In closing, primary voters don’t always choose the best general election candidates but failing to show muscle in high-turnout primaries is a precursor for losses in November. The fields were wide open for Quality to move in despite Trump, but the Establishment did what they did best before the Tea Party, and Trump showed up: Losing.

Thank you for reading.