That’s the grade Douthat tentatively gives the GOP’s performance this year:
Keep in mind that Republicans in 2014 have not merely been trying to outdo Mitt Romney’s (or John McCain’s) presidential effort; they’ve also been trying to outdo their own not-especially-impressive Senate efforts from 2010 and 2012, in which bad candidates and weak messaging and poor turnout operations handed a number of winnable seats to the Democrats. …
[I]f the polls hold, and the Republicans mostly win the states they should win and pick off a couple that seemed like reaches six months ago, then the G.O.P. will have accomplished something it conspicuously failed to do in the last few election cycles: The party will have run a mostly error-free campaign, with good or good-enough candidates and strategies (especially Gardner’s run in Colorado), that doesn’t effectively gift-wrap control of the Senate for the Democrats. And while Republicans will obviously need to clearer a higher bar in 2016, it will still be reasonable to call that kind of outcome progress for the party — a necessary, if obviously not sufficient, step toward being a majority coalition once again.
The Dish 