race, these are big states with a lot of moderates, some independents in there. when you put up herschel walker and dr. oz and blake masters and jd vance, because of their fealty to donald trump, because he hand-picked them in some cases, as mitch mcconnell just said, you may suffer the consequences. right. some of the guys may win. i d say jd vance will be a favorite. what s happening, you re taking races that are extremely winnable and, in some states, you re throwing them away. dr. oz is trailing badly. herschel walker is testing the proposition of how many secret sons will voters tolerate. this is a remarkable turn of events. except that it is not that new, it s just been exacerbated. we ve seen previous races, like sharon engle in nevada and others, where winnable races have been thrown away by a primary electorate that doubled down on extremism.
night is if republicans are costing themselves, or are potentially going to cost themselves what should be a very clear opportunity to get control of the u.s. senate, because of the candidates they re choosing to nominate in some of these key battleground states. yeah, it s so interesting. and i m just thinking of, you know, sb-70 in arizona in 2010. that was something that was simply too much, too far for a lot of people and that really started a lot of movement against those candidates that had supported sb10-70. there were a number of republican senate candidates, i remember, that year, you remember the name christine o donnell in delaware, ken buck in colorado, sharon engle in nevada. we ve been down this road before, where republicans had favorable midterm climates, nominated very weak candidates, lost general elections they
in november for the republicans, but in state after state, you see what professionals might call the wrong candidates up. so this is feeding the general anxiety on the republican side, that maybe this is the wrong horse. well, of course, as we heard from michael steele, who knew all too well about it, this has happened before. republicans keep doing it. they did it with mcdonald, i am not a witch. they did it with todd aiken. i think it was richard murdoch. todd aiken was talking about rape, and you can t get pregnant if you re raped, i think he said. murdoch, sharon engle. i think it is safe to say, with all due respect to these people who wanted to be public servants, they were weirdos and freaks. democrats are going back now and running against more weirdos and freaks. that s why we re seeing it, gene, time and time again. we re seeing states that
voters. that s a quote. i m not making that up. the idea the border crisis has been engineered in order to punish people that the president does not like. these are the sort of statements that haunt you. the issue set that republicans should face or should be, you know, touting are blindingly obvious. it is the economy. it s cost of living. it s general incompetence in washington and the president s record in office. and democrats record in office, unified the last year and a half of government. anything off that message is off message. it is off brand. it s the sort of thing that can alienate the voters you need to win. a bad candidate can lose a race even in good partisan territory and a good political environment, or else we d be calling sharon engle, roy moore, todd aiken, senator. these are the things that can swamp a candidate and can make the candidate the issue rather than the political environment. noah, can you give us an autopsy on how regan lost? how crazy was he? what d