The story of 2022’s Senate races was that Republicans—at Donald Trump’s urging—botched several eminently winnable races by nominating various goofballs (Herschel Walker in Georgia), weirdos (Blake Masters in Arizona), and Dr. Oz-es (Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania). In a word, the GOP had a bozo problem.

The story of this cycle was supposed to be that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and National Republican Senate Committee Chair Steve Daines of Montana, having seized the wheel back from Trump, were going to use the party’s resources to guide the nomination of more conventional Republican candidates—business owners and military veterans and so forth who had established ties to local political networks and proven histories of acting presentable.

And it was working, up to a point. While loose-cannon MAGA ex-newscaster Kari Lake is poised to win nomination in Arizona, the presumptive nominees in other flippable seats are figures like West Virginia’s Jim Justice (a local coal oligarch and the state’s current governor), Wisconsin’s Eric Hovde (a banking and real estate guy whose father served in the Reagan administration), and Montana’s Tim Sheehy (a Navy veteran who founded a company that fights forest fires). Pennsylvania’s nomination is shaping up to go to David McCormick, a relatively boring hedge fund executive, and Ohio’s primary winner was Bernie Moreno, who’s a bit Trumpy in his positions but is also a polished public figure who was already known for owning luxury car dealerships and being a civic booster in Cleveland. In Michigan, there’s Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent and member in good standing of the Washington national security establishment.

So, is it going to be smooth sailing from here to a Senate........

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