In The Arena Tuesday Was A Hollow Victory For The GOP Republican establishment types will celebrate. Conservatives won’t be joining them.

In numerous other states the Republican Party has had a hard time rallying voters to its side on its issues. The Republicans who won on Tuesday did so as anti-Barack Obama candidates, not as Republicans with an agenda worth supporting. There are three reasons for this failure, all of which directly derive from the mistakes made by the same pool of GOP-commissioned consultants who win whether the party wins or loses.

First, in the Mississippi primary, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Chamber of Commerce, and other affiliated groups made a decision to run a ruthless campaign against the Republican base. Conservative activists were called racists and bigots. Conservative organizations were accused of profiting off the races — something psychologists would term “projection.” Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, declared the tea party candidates challenging Washington’s picks would be ruthlessly stamped out.

Republicans in Washington who declared war on their very base are now shocked that conservative voters have little interest or motivation in helping Pat Roberts, Thom Tillis, David Perdue, or a host of other candidates. A Republican establishment that has spent several years badmouthing Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and outside groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund now find themselves openly begging the Senate Conservatives Fund to engage in races while they fly Ted Cruz around the country to motivate the base.

Second, the Washington Republicans decided to stand behind insiders and creatures of Washington at a time when Americans across the country, regardless of party, have come loathe Washington and the insiders who feed off it. In September, a Washington Post/ABC poll showed that 47 percent of voters “strongly disapprove” of the GOP, and 72 percent of Americans generally disapprove of the congressional GOP. Despite these numbers we saw almost no new faces running. Ed Gillespie, a lobbyist and former RNC Chairman, was the GOP’s struggling candidate in Virginia. Pat Roberts is their guy in Kansas. Thom Tillis struggled in North Carolina, though he ultimately won, as the Washington Republicans’ pick.

In Georgia, one of the few new faces to manage to oust the establishment GOP in the primaries, David Perdue, struggled to win in a close race. The Georgia Republicans had consolidated behind long-time congressman Jack Kingston, and Perdue used that to his advantage running as an outsider. But, as Republicans have seen for more than a decade, rich, self-funding candidates like Perdue usually do badly in elections. Perdue, who lives in the gated community on a gated private island, had trouble connecting with voters while the Democrats have outspent him on Atlanta airwaves attacking him for outsourcing jobs. Perdue’s best argument for himself was that he was not a proxy for Barack Obama’s agenda. It’s just not enough.

And that brings us to the third issue. Republican strategists entrenched in the beltway, covetous of power for the sake of power, have no agenda other than “We are not Barack Obama.” It fell to outside groups to carry most of the Republican water on the anti-Obamacare campaign. Likewise, third-party groups have been most vocal on securing the border, while the Republican establishment played it safe.

On Nov. 3, Alexander Burns wrote in Politico that Republican leaders were preparing “with growing confidence … to argue that broad GOP gains in the House and Senate would represent a top-to-bottom validation of their party’s mainline wing.” But when 47 percent of Americans “strongly disapprove” of the Republican Party, it’s hard to find validation—especially when there’s no real Republican message to validate other than we-are-not-Obama. The sole validation to be found there is that Americans reject the president while still hating the same leaders of the GOP whom voters punished in 2006.

When David Brat shocked the political class by beating Rep. Eric Cantor earlier this year, Republicans should have taken it as a warning sign that their candidates needed to campaign against Washington instead of promising what Washington could do if only Republicans were in charge. The Republican consultant class, in an act of self-protection, quickly convinced everyone that Cantor had lost because of Democratic cross-over votes. Now, while Democrats spend money on voter mobilization, the very same Republican consultants who got rich off their losses in 2006, 2008, and 2012 are making killer commissions on mail and media buys.

Republicans did well on Election Day. The president’s job approval has cratered. The GOP outperforms the President on a host of issues from the economy to handling terror threats. But Washington’s Republican establishment made a conscious decision to find candidates who looked and sounded more like them and less like the Americans whose votes they need. They have provided no alternative and took far longer to close the deal with voters than they should have. When the voting closed on Tuesday, Republicans did not so much win as Democrats lost.

And so the message is plain: The GOP celebration will be brief. When the new Republican Congress convenes next year, tries to lead, and looks over its shoulder, there won’t be many conservatives following.