Make no mistake; this was not a loss for the social issue conservative crowd. While Gomez is a great candidate, a fiscal conservative, and a foreign policy expert who spent a good deal of time on the front lines in faraway places protecting his parents adopted country, he’s not a culture warrior for the right.
This is a failure for all those fat cat Republican donors and establishment oriented Super PACs who complain endlessly that the Republican Party is too conservative on social issues. This was their chance, and they took a pass. And by the way, those same groups ended up going all in for Todd Akin at the end of the 2012 campaign.
To be clear, both the NRSC under Chairman Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and the RNC under Chairman Reince Priebus did help Gomez, and did try to win this race, so let there be no confusion about that.
The next time that you are forced to hear a diatribe from the yacht club crowd about how terrible it is that we don’t have more moderate candidates, ask them what they did for Gabriel Gomez in the Massachusetts special election. If they have nothing to say on that, then politely tell them to shut up, and advise them to keep their day jobs.
