“Think of what happened this cycle, Martha — the Republican establishment, if you will, got nominees they wanted virtually across the board,” Hume said. “Tea Party candidates were defeated in a number of primaries. More experienced candidates were nominated. And if you look through the cycle of the season you will see that you didn’t have any of these gaffes by Republicans that were you know basically too much for some candidates in the last two cycle to survive even. You didn’t have that this year. There has been a lot of gaffes on the Democratic side. You put that together with the fact that the lineup, the key states in play all favor the Republicans. If they don’t win this time, the internal conflict in that party which is — there is something like that every party at all times — will explode in my judgment.”

“The Tea Party people will say, ‘Alright, we did it your way this time. We did it all your way basically and we still didn’t win. We are not going along anymore,’” he continued. “And there will be a civil war, I predict. And you look ahead to 2016. You know, one of the things that party needs to do most is unite. A lot of people believe the fact that the party was not united slowed the turnout for their nominee in 2012 for the presidency. The candidate who is running needs to be able to unite the party. It will be hard to do anyway if they lose this midterm election in the sense of not getting the Senate. They won’t lose this election. They will win more seats, or they’ll add seats. But it will be as bloody a set of recriminations as we have ever seen.”