Remember the disaster show that was the GOP candidates for Senate in 2022? It was supposed to be the Republicans’ moment to gain control of both houses of Congress in a “red wave” election.

As we all know, the “red wave” began and pretty much ended in Florida. There were multiple Senate races where the GOP had a fair shot at unseating a weak or shaky Democrat incumbent. But thanks to a messy primary process, and Donald Trump attempting to play kingmaker and giving us candidates who had proven their “loyalty” to him, we ended up with Senate candidates who had a much harder race than others would have had.

Let’s just go over the Senate races, shall we? The worst example was, of course, Pennsylvania, where Mehmet Oz (Trump’s chosen candidate) lost to a near-vegetable, John Fetterman, who isn’t exactly thriving in his role as Senator. We here at Victory Girls had issues with Oz from the start, but he would have been measures better than Fetterman. Unfortunately, there was no enthusiasm for Oz, and the Democrat machine was able to flip the seat to Fetterman.

Georgia was a winnable race, especially against the radical Raphael Warnock. But the GOP ended up with Herschel Walker, hoping that celebrity (and Trump’s backing) would carry the day. It did not.

New Hampshire also looked winnable, because Democrat Maggie Hassan was extremely weak. But Don Bolduc was the candidate, thanks to Democrat PAC shenanigans by Chuck Schumer, who judged that Bolduc would be the easiest candidate for Hassan to beat. Unfortunately, they won that bet.

If any one of these three races had been won, then Republicans would be at the very least splitting power in the Senate, with Kamala Harris playing tiebreaker. If all three had been won, then Mitch McConnell, not Chuck Schumer, would be Majority Leader and proving to be an additional check on a spend-happy Biden administration. And yes, there is plenty to complain about regarding McConnell, but he is MILES better than Chuck Schumer, who is nothing but a leftist demagogue and a rubber stamp to keep spending money. (Remember, Schumer insisted that Biden had the authority to unilaterally forgive student loan debts – and Biden listened.)

Despite the insistence that the GOP did all right for itself during the 2022 election, it seems that there has been a realization that mistakes were made. And there’s also a sense that 2024 is an even more favorable year for Republicans over Democrats when it comes to the Senate election map. There are Democrat senators in red states – Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Jon Tester in Montana, and Joe Manchin in West Virginia – who are all up for re-election. But a competitive seat in a red state is no guarantee of victory. Which is why the new head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Senator Steve Daines of Montana, has been very open about his desire to fight to flip the Senate in recent interviews.

Daines is planning on being a whole lot more selective when it comes to the GOP primaries this time around – which means that despite their inability to admit that mistakes were made, the GOP is trying to learn and not repeat the same errors in 2024.

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the current head of the party’s campaign arm, has said he plans to be more active in recruiting candidates and selective in where the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) sends its support — a departure from his predecessor, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who argued it wasn’t his job to interfere in primaries.”

In West Virginia, for example, Daines is backing Gov. Jim Justice (R) as he runs against fellow Republican Rep. Alex Mooney in the Senate primary. They’re both vying for the seat held by Democrat incumbent Sen. Joe Manchin, who hasn’t said whether he’s running for reelection.”

In Montana, Daines has been supportive of businessman Tim Sheehy, who is challenging incumbent Democrat Sen. Jon Tester, and said he’d prefer to avoid a contentious primary as Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) weighs a bid that could potentially tee up an eventual Tester-Rosendale rematch of their 2018 Senate race.”

“Senate Republicans have seen the majority slip through their fingers in previous cycles. And they’re so close to regaining the majority, they can taste it. Republicans in 2024 have an opportunity to be on offense, and they’re going to be looking for candidates who can prevail in a general election,” said Jeff Grappone, who led communications for the Senate GOP Conference under Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), adding that candidate quality “has been an issue” for the party.”

“It’s understandable after the last cycle, that there would be a desire to have a different approach, a winning approach, to go on offense and to not leave any opportunities on the table,” Grappone said.”

The point is to pick candidates who can win in their state, not the candidate who is the most loyal to Donald Trump. Sometimes those candidates might be one and the same. But if they’re not, then the priority absolutely has to be winning the Senate seat. The consensus also is that Donald Trump should be busy running his own primary campaign instead of playing kingmaker this time around. Daines has already expressed his support for Trump, so hopefully that means that Trump will defer to Daines’s decisions as head of the NRSC. But who knows. We still have a month before the first GOP presidential primary debate, and months and months before Senate primaries.

The bottom line is that the NRSC, and the RNC itself, must be both smart and strategic in who they throw their support behind, and then start spending the money to get out the vote. With as favorable a map as we have, there is zero sense in taking the Rick Scott approach and simply letting the primaries become a free-for-all. That’s how we got Democrats spending money to promote a Republican candidate in New Hampshire, without the Republicans responding aggressively in kind. The Democrats have no qualms about picking their candidates in a primary and then spending the money, both via PACs and through their own official fundraising.

But why can’t we get the GOP leadership (looking at YOU, Ronna McDaniel) to say, “you know, 2022 didn’t work out, and we are going to have to be smarter about who represents us, and much more aggressive in supporting them”? Is that so hard? It might be a bitter pill to swallow, but it would at least show the voters a little honesty, and engender a bit of a better feeling that the GOP understands that they need to be more responsive in local races. Yeah, the Democrats never apologize when their candidate strategy fails – but they hold the Senate and the White House at the moment, so they clearly learned something after 2016.

The presidential primary is an entirely different monster than the Senate primaries. We deserve to see some smart choices who may not appeal nationally, but can win locally. A Republican in a blue/purple state like Colorado or Arizona is going to be a different kind of Republican than one who runs in Montana or West Virginia or Ohio. This is a lesson that the Democrats used to know, but are quickly forgetting in their desire to run to the left as much as possible, which is what is leaving someone like Joe Manchin so vulnerable. The GOP needs to smarten up, make good choices, and then start spending the money like the country depends on it.

Featured image via Proulain on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license