For starters, Republican leaders desperately want to keep people from reading too much into Alabama. The field and the combatants were unusual, they insist. For two decades, Moore has been a folk hero to many religious conservatives; former state Attorney General Strange, meanwhile, carried the stigma of being tapped for the Senate by disgraced Governor Robert Bentley—who at the time was being investigated by Strange for sex-scandally misconduct and who was eventually driven from office. So the first lesson, chuckled Steven Law, head of the McConnell-tied Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC committed to nurturing the party’s majority: “If somebody who is about to go to jail offers to appoint you to the U.S. Senate, you should say no.”

More seriously, said Law, “That particular race had certain structural elements to it that at the outset we weren’t fully cognizant of.”

Strange’s association with Bentley was “more toxic than people in D.C. realized,” said another senior GOP operative. Long after stories about Bentley faded from the media, the stench stuck. “It was something folks were talking about at church and at the salon.”

More generally, the Alabama electorate is seen as a special breed. Said the operative, “I think Alabama—when you look at other states we’re going to be playing in that potentially have primary challenges—the makeup of the state is very different.”

Alabama’s specialness aside, it does offer lessons for the broader political landscape, say leaders. Law, in fact, laid out many of these in a memo to his PAC’s “investors” last month on how “the playbook for winning Republican primaries needs to be recalibrated and improved” to inspire “an electorate that has dramatically realigned itself with President Trump at the helm.”

Lesson #1: Candidates must never forget that their voters remain seriously ticked off. “After Barack Obama was elected in 2008, Democratic voters spent about a year in a cloud of euphoric giddiness, feeling like things were wonderful,” Law told me. “This is not the mood Republican voters are in. They are expectant, frustrated, unhappy with pace of change in Washington.”

In his memo, Law noted that Moore had a “combative and politically incorrect style” that happily reminded focus group participants of Trump. By contrast, the “cautious,” “genial” Strange had an “affable demeanor and soft banter” that “were pitch-perfect for Birmingham business audiences, but seemed out of tune with more conservative voters.”

“Republicans are in a feisty and confrontational mood, and they want to see their leaders show some energy and fight,” Law told me.

Mild-mannered candidates take note: Time to start cultivating your rage. (Is there such a thing as reverse meditation?)

Unsurprisingly, the continued existence of Obamacare really makes the base crazy. “When the Senate failed to push the repeal, it was like dropping a huge magnet on the table,” said Law. “All Republican voters suddenly realigned around that issue.”