Maybe Mike Castle deserves some of the blame

Yesterday on Meet the Press, political consultant Mike Murphy said this about the Republican Senate loss in Delaware:

I have a bone to pick with Jim DeMint...There has to be some level of pragmatism inside the party leadership

I never followed the Castle campaign that closely, but it seems to be that Castle deserves at least some of the blame for running a terrible campaign. Pat Caddell pointed out on a Ricochet podcast that Castle completely misread the primary electorate, and should have "thrown himself" at the tea party over the summer. Another idea? Maybe Mike Castle should have shown some "pragmatism" by picking up the phone and calling Jim DeMint. If he had done so, maybe he would be on his way to the Senate.

There has also been a lot of talk about the fact that the tea party Senate candidates fared poorly on Tuesday night. That is not exactly true considering what happened in Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky.

A clearer pattern is the fact that the self funded billionaires and hundred-millionaires all lost - Fiorina, Whitman and McMahon. I've read that the GOP backed these candidates in part based on their willingness and ability to fund their own campaigns.

But is that really the way to go? I mean, look at Scott Brown. He won in a deep blue state not because he was a billionaire, he won because he was a highly attractive, highly effective candidate.

And perhaps there is a conflict of interest here. Political consultants may love candidates like Meg Whitman because she can afford to spend $160 million on airtime and political consultants. Reports show that Mike Murphy was paid something like $90K a month to work on the Whitman campaign.

But according to Pat Caddel, Meg Whitman was completely mismanaged and overexposed. He argued that the campaign was designed to get consultants rich and not necessarily get her elected.

Perhaps there is an issue of incentives - an agency problem as they call it. Maybe political consultants don't always have the same incentives as the party or the candidates.

So maybe going forward we should be more "pragamatic" as Mr. Murphy likes to say, and focus on nominating candidates that can actually attract votes, rather than nominating candidates purely based on their ability to afford the likes of Mike Murphy.