They may have taken the House and won governor’s races across the country, but they didn’t take the Senate, losing winnable races in Colorado, Nevada, and Delaware. All the candidates were associated with the tea party, and all of them were pushed by South Carolina senator Jim DeMint. (DeMint aides point out that they weren’t the ones who decided to plow millions of dollars into California.)
And boy, do Republican senators not like him.
A Politico article lines up all the veiled jabs. First, there’s Lindsay Graham, the more centrist senator from South Carolina, who famously does not get along with DeMint:
Former senate majority leader, and current lobbyist Trent Lott:
A Republican “high-profile senator”:
DeMint now has company; the victories of intra-party insurgents Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron John in Wisconsin, and Marco Rubio of Florida means that the tea party has more support in the Senate. And what’s more, the big benefit of winning the Senate is control of the committees, which, as we now know, DeMint doesn’t believe in.
GOP Senators fight over failure [Politico]
