Senate Republicans are pointing plenty of fingers following the party's disappointing results in Tuesday's nationwide elections, and not just at former President Donald Trump, sounding an alarm about how it might impact next year's general election.
Republicans lost the governor's race in deep red Kentucky, with a Trump-backed candidate falling to the incumbent Democrat, and lost a ballot initiative in Ohio that enshrines abortion rights into that state's Constitution. The party also lost a shot to gain a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and saw Democrats wrest control of the Virginia General Assembly by winning the House.
"Part of what we have to do is get the vote out," Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said, according to The Hill. "I don't know if you all saw the disturbing number[s] [for] turnout. Clearly, these were races that Democrats didn't win, Republicans lost. We didn't show up.
"It's about execution; it's about messaging, and we've got to do a better job. "[Tuesday], to me, was [a] complete failure."
Tillis said some Republican-controlled state legislatures have gone too far in restricting abortion and that "some states ... went further than they should have."
"We've seen that get rejected in Ohio," he said, adding North Carolina passed abortion restrictions more carefully calibrated to the views of the state's voters.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who is not seeking reelection in 2024, said abortion and Republican candidates' association with Trump's claims the 2020 election was stolen hurt the party.
"If we spend our time looking back to 2020 and the 2020 election, the American people have moved on, and they want to talk about their future, not what happened in the past."
Senate Minority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., stressed Republican candidates must appeal to independent and moderate GOP voters in next year's general election.
"I think people in individual states have to think about not just a primary electorate, a primary-election electorate but a general-election electorate," he said, according to The Hill. "A general-election electorate, it's going to be independent voters, moderate Republicans, and some conservative Democrats. You have to plan for that.
"There are a lot of factors that come into it, including who you align yourself with."
Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Senate Republican candidates need to frame their positions on abortion in a way that appeals to voters and stay away from endorsing a federal abortion ban.
He said the political environment will be different in 2024 because the election will largely be a referendum on Joe Biden's track record, The Hill reported.
"Joe Biden will be on the ballot in 2024, most likely, and the issues will be about inflation, about the border, about what's going on in the world in terms of geopolitics," he said. "I think it will be a different issue set and a very different turnout model, as well."