After the botched attempt to invade Cuba ended in disaster at the Bay of Pigs, President John F. Kennedy remarked, “There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.” In other words: Everyone wants to take credit for winning, no one for losing. Kennedy’s quip doesn’t apply quite yet to the race for Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, which remains too close to call after Tuesday’s special election, but Republicans are already acting as though they have lost the race to Democrat Conor Lamb—and they’re making excuses for it.

In fact, they’ve been making excuses for many days now, as polls showed Lamb leading in a district that Donald Trump carried by 20 percentage points in 2016. In the days before the election, Republicans “trashed” their party’s candidate, Rick Saccone. Trump privately called him “weak.” Now that Lamb appears the likely victor—he won by fewer than 1,000 votes, within the margin for a recount—Republicans are also rushing to explain why this special election and has no bearing on the upcoming midterms in November.

But if Saccone indeed lost, it’s yet another reason for Republicans to fear the fall elections. The party poured millions of dollars into the race. Saccone embraced the Trump brand in a region where Trump was enormously popular. Trump held two rallies in support of Saccone. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son Donald Trump Jr. also visited the district to bolster Saccone, who described himself as “Trump before Trump was Trump.” And Trump’s decision to raise tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, while it might not have been solely motivated to help Saccone, should have played well with industrial blue collar workers who are a key segment of the 18th’s electorate.

But the Republicans, at least publicly, are in deep denial about the significance of this race. Here are their main excuses for Tuesday’s result:

1. Saccone was outspent.

Lamb raised raised $3.9 million, versus Saccone’s $600,000. “Candidates cannot get out-raised 5-to-1 and expect to be competitive in 2018,” a Republican operative told Axios. But those numbers are misleading, as they only represent the money raised by candidates themselves. If outside funding is included, Saccone spent $11.9 million versus Lamb’s $6 million: