Missed layup

AS EXPECTED, voters were motivated by angst over inflation, the state of the economy and other Biden administration burdens.

How then to account for the breakwaters that curtailed the midterm red wave?

Turns out that candidates and campaigns matter, as pointed out by former National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director Kevin McLaughlin to The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. McLaughlin and his close ally Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had sounded the alarm for a political eon: The GOP was supporting and advancing candidates whose appeal in a general election was questionable.

Democrats recognized as much, funding Donald Trump-backed Republicans in the primaries in key states as part of a strategy to boost their own chances in November. And this strategy may have paid off.

We sympathize with Pennsylvania voters forced to choose between an incapacitated John Fetterman and Trump-endorsed Mehmet Oz, but their choice may yet keep the Senate from flipping. The retiring Pat Toomey’s seat should have represented something close to a layup for Republicans. Instead, in the Quaker State and elsewhere, Trump-backed candidates lacking experience and political savvy, battered and bruised from grueling primaries, turned the ball over.

MAGA is a factor still, actually a primary leviathan. Its appeal on a general election ballot, however, is finite.

The brilliant, sardonic, and satirical Babylon Bee proclaimed, “Republican Party Staves Off Red Wave.”

Or at least Republican primary voters did.