Republican: ‘We didn’t nominate any crazies’

A Republican pollster on Thursday called the incoming class of GOP senators the “strongest” he’d ever seen and said the party didn’t repeat the mistakes of 2012 by nominating “crazies.”
 
{mosads}“In state after state we nominated the right person,” GOP pollster Ed Goeas said at a Christian Science Monitor event with reporters. “We didn’t nominate any crazies.”
 
Republicans believed an opportunity existed to pick up seats in the House and Senate in 2012, but Democrats came out ahead in both chambers and President Obama won a second term in office.
 
Many in the party blamed a weak field of gaffe-prone candidates for the party’s poor showing, and an effort to recruit better candidates became a primary focus of the Republican campaign arms ahead of 2014.
 
Those efforts paid off, as Republicans flipped the Senate and picked up their largest majority in the House since World War II.
 
Goeas said the incoming group of senators would provide few allies for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who would eventually “fade into the background.”