Curiously, Republicans are doing the trashing without evidence that these candidates are actually going to lose. Let’s take the contenders dubbed by the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein as the “tea party triumvirate.” Ken Buck, who won the right to challenge Sen. Michael Bennet in Colorado, currently leads the incumbent by 2.8 points. Former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, the GOP establishment choice, leads Bennet by only 0.3 percentage points in a theoretical matchup. Kentucky’s Rand Paul leads Democrat Jack Conway by 2.5 points, and while Paul’s defeated rival Trey Grayson often led by more, Paul has come back from trailing Conway when he first entered the race. The only member of the triumvirate trailing in the polls is Nevada’s Sharron Angle, who’s down by two. But by the time Angle won the primary, Reid was also beating the once-front-runner, Sue Lowden.
The Angle-Lowden situation explains much of what’s happening here. The party favorites, in some races, are terrible campaigners. Kentucky’s Grayson, tipped as a national star for years, turned in a whining, fumbling debut performance, once griping about Paul’s endorsement from Sarah Palin, and once complaining that the media didn’t ask him as many easy questions as it asked Paul. Lowden imploded—with prodding from Reid’s nuclear-strength oppo team—after suggesting that a goods-for-services bartering system could replace “ObamaCare,” and getting tied in knots about what this meant. Norton made an unconvincing pilgrimage to the right, a source of great amusement to activists who remembered her 2005 support of a tax-raising ballot initiative.
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