GOP avoids past mistakes in Senate picks

WASHINGTON - Tuesday's elections are the best evidence yet that Republicans are avoiding previous mistakes and improving their chances of controlling the Senate during President Barack Obama's final two years in office.

GOP voters again chose solidly conservative nominees while rejecting the most extreme and outlandish types who led the party to painful losses in 2010 and 2012.

The simple way to view this year's results, thus far, is to say "establishment" Republicans are outperforming tea party insurgents. That's largely true. But it blurs the extent to which nearly all Republican candidates including some who have been in Congress for decades have shifted rightward to stay in step with ardently conservative voters who helped create the tea party in 2009 and still dominate GOP primaries.

The differences between tea party and non-tea party Republicans are shrinking. Often it's merely tone and experience that separate them. Tone and experience matter, however, and Tuesday's GOP voters chose the less bombastic and unpredictable conservatives in most cases.

In Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell easily dispatched tea party challenger Matt Bevin. As a 30-year senator and party leader, McConnell is about as establishment as they come. He has predicted that he and other mainstream Republicans will "crush" tea party candidates this year.

Bevin initially excited anti-establishment Republicans. But his campaign eventually collapsed under rookie mistakes and McConnell's overwhelming advantage in money, experience and organization.

In Georgia, Republican voters rejected the two most outspoken tea party proponents, Reps. Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey. They set up a July 22 Senate runoff between two men who constantly emphasize their conservative credentials but leaven their rhetoric by wooing corporate support: Dollar General CEO David Perdue and Rep. Jack Kingston claimed the top two spots Tuesday and now begin a two-month runoff campaign.

Establishment Republicans once feared that Broun, who called embryology and evolution "lies straight from the pit of hell," would win the nomination and become the type of gaffe-prone, over-the-top candidate who killed great GOP Senate chances in Delaware, Indiana, Missouri and other states in 2010 and 2012.

In Oregon, Republicans chose pediatric neurosurgeon Monica Wehby, who supports abortion rights, to run against first-term Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley this fall. Her opponents included state Rep. Jason Conger, who was endorsed by the Tea Party Nation and former presidential candidate Rick Santorum.

Arkansas' two uncontested Senate primaries officially set up a fierce November showdown between two-term Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor and freshman Republican Rep. Tom Cotton.

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GOP avoids past mistakes in Senate picks