There’s no more popular pastime of today’s Republicans than railing against their party’s “establishment.” But as the GOP is set to claim both chambers of Congress, the rabble rousers owe their scapegoat a thank-you note.

Senate Republicans will gain a 53-seat majority, and House Republicans should hold narrow control of their chamber, and what a relief for the party after a midterm disappointment two years ago.

That’s when Republicans failed to flip winnable seats with candidates like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia. They had little-to-no political experience and didn’t appeal to swing voters. But former President Donald Trump endorsed them both. Despite running two years into a presidency that featured a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the highest inflation in 40 years, Walker and Oz still lost.

Since that debacle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Mike Johnson worked to recruit candidates with broader appeal. That strategy — and the two leaders’ support for foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel — drew fire from Trump’s allies on the Hill. Matt Gaetz called Johnson a “Republican in Name Only.” Even Trump once declared McConnell a “Super RINO.”

But the so-called RINOs deserve credit for delivering last week’s victories by shepherding qualified candidates through their primaries and boxing out the rest.

Before Oz or Walker had snatched defeat from victory’s jaws — also a Republican pastime — McConnell was already en route to West Virginia. He made the trip to “meet a portly English bulldog,” as the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week, and recruit the dog’s owner, Gov. Jim Justice, to run for Senate. Justice agreed, and Republicans flipped the seat without much trouble.

A key architect of the Senate scheme was Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, who led the National Republican Senatorial Committee through this cycle and helped turn his state’s second Senate seat red. Daines recruited former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy over Trump-loyalist Rep. Matt Rosendale, a member of the House GOP chaos caucus who helped oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year. Rosendale lost to Democratic Senator John Tester in 2018 by 3.5 percentage points and was considering another run.

But Daines’ endorsement of Sheehy — and Johnson’s savvy decision not to endorse Rosendale, a colleague in his own chamber — ensured the GOP nomination went to the better candidate. Sheehy flipped the Senate seat last week with a 7-point victory over Tester.

With support from McConnell and early endorsements from Trump, Republicans won Senate races in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. That’s four W’s for the outgoing majority leader.

“As I said to some criticism, candidate quality is absolutely essential,” McConnell said in a press conference Nov. 6. “It was a hell of a good day.”

Johnson, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and the Congressional Leadership Fund took a similar line, and it paid off.

Take a GOP primary in Colorado, where Democrats in June funded a Republican candidate they wanted to face. A Democratic PAC and candidate Adam Frisch dropped $400,000 in ads highlighting Republican contender Ron Hanks, who attended the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally. Colorado Democrats thought Hanks would be easier to beat in November than the GOP primary’s frontrunner, Jeff Hurd, whom they attacked with another $100,000 in ads.

But the Congressional Leadership Fund — a super-PAC aligned with Johnson and House GOP Leadership — struck back with $400,000 attacking Hanks on guns. Hurd won the primary, and cruised to a November win. If Hanks had won the primary, Republicans might be down one Congressional seat.

The GOP majority in the House will be razor-thin. Without House Republican leadership pushing out MAGA-style populists for candidates with broader appeal, the GOP would have lost its majority.

Have Republicans learned their lesson? Here comes the impossible.

In the Senate, Republicans chose Sen. John Thune of South Dakota to lead their majority. Daines, architect of the Senate GOP’s winning strategy, had been pushing his colleagues to back Thune, according to Fox News, and he got his man.

Congressional Republicans have a better chance of keeping their majorities if they shed the infighting and keep their winning strategy. But that would require the GOP to do what does not come to it naturally: Take a win and learn from it.

 

Thomas McKenna is a junior studying political economy.