The Rule and the Corollary

Doug Mastriano is running for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania. He lost a winnable race for Governor and arguably dragged down Dr. Oz, though he, too, was not a great candidate.

Kari Lake and Blake Masters are both pondering runs in Arizona.

Years ago, James Carville and Paul Begala wrote a book on how to get elected to office. One of the points they made was one everyone needs to remember: Do nothing and take no position to secure yourself a primary win that then costs you the general election. Your goal is to win the general election and not just the primary. Voters, too, need to remember not to nominate people in the primary who will lose the general election.

Mastriano, Lake, and Masters all blew winnable races. Lake still contends her race was stolen from her. Masters and Mastriano are not so vocal about nonsense. But they lost winnable races, and they were not narrow losses where you can see taking a chance on them again.

Pennsylvania and Arizona Republicans will have to decide if they want to cost the Republicans the Senate and engage in political suicide.

For my part, I’ll go on now and endorse Dave McCormick for the United States Senate in Pennsylvania.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Kelly, in Wisconsin, lost by eleven points, and Wisconsin Republicans put him back on the ballot to lose by 11 points again.

Lake, Masters, and Mastriano all lost big.

And then there’s Trump, who beat Hillary Clinton and has been losing ever since. He said we’d get tired of all the winning, but I’d actually like to win. MAGA has traded winning for whining, and we should not expect Trump, who cost us 2018, 2020, and 2022, to somehow pull it off this time. We now have a pattern and track record of no impulse control, failures to stay on message, disdain from the public, and a desire to rally his base at the expense of growing a coalition. His Twitterbro warriors coordinating hyper-online messaging will not win him Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, or even Georgia.

If you think that is the safe bet for 2024, you might need to just stay home.