Last week, Greg Brannon failed to force a runoff in the North Carolina Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Polls show Paul Broun fading to third or fourth place in Georgia’s primary later this month. Nobody seems to have laid a glove on Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, whose primary will be held in June.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was panned by conservatives for the prediction he made to the New York Times about Tea Party primary challengers. “I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” he said. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”
A provocative way for a Republican leader, locked in a tough race himself, to talk about the most passionate activists in his party. But aside from an open seat in Nebraska, where Ben Sasse appears to hold a double-digit lead, is McConnell wrong?
Tea Party candidates still have an outside chance of toppling Thad Cochran in Mississippi and winning the nomination for the Senate seat being vacated by Tom Coburn in Oklahoma. They don’t yet reliably lead in either of these races, however. And from the challenge to Pat Roberts in Kansas to McConnell in Kentucky, conservative insurgents are way behind.
All this is a big change from when Rand Paul beat Trey Grayson, Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey would have pasted Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter, respectively, and Ted Cruz defeated David Dewhurst. Grayson ended up going to Harvard and heading a Democratic super PAC; Crist and Specter left the GOP entirely.
