Republicans keep getting surprised by defeat

In 2012 there was Mitt Romney's defeat, which came as such a surprise to big Republican insiders (like the Romney campaign itself, plus Karl Rove) that they were already measuring the drapes for the Oval Office.    Karl Rove very publicly on Fox News would not at first believe it when the election was called for Obama.

Last night's stunning defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was an even bigger surprise to everyone.   So much so that there was no plan for what to do now about his leadership position.   Should he give up the Majority Leader's position now or serve out the remainder of the term?

The Republican party is reeling, and people are grasping for explanations.    The most recent internal polls of the Cantor campaign were said to show him winning by 34%.  Instead he lost by 11% to a political novice who raised about $200,000 to Cantor's $5 million.

It was considered such a forgone win for Cantor that the Democrats didn't even put up a candidate until one week ago, choosing their candidate by a telehpone conference call of the party establishment.     Fortunately they did.

Now we have a race between two professors from the same college.  Quick checks last night by MSNBC of student ratings show that the Democrat has higher student-approval ratings than the Republican.   For what that's worth.

The two big factors seem to be:  (1) The Tea Party really energized it's sympathizers to come out and vote, primarily with an anti-immigration-reform message;   and (2)  Cantor has become so identified as a national Republican and part of the Washington establishment, and he has not maintained contact with people in his district.

It shows that maybe money doesn't make as much difference as we thought.   And we Democrats should not get confident, because the people of this very conservative district went for the more conservative candidate.   And his views may be ultra-conservative, but he is not a crazy person like some of the Tea Party candidates from 2010 that lost the general election. 

But the interesting question:   Why did they not even have an inkling that this was going to happen?    To be off by such a magnitude -- thinking you were 34 points ahead and actually losing by 11 -- that's a 45 point mis-reading of the electorate.

I'm sure the political post-mortems are already underway.

Ralph