The Tea Party suffered a night of near-misses in Tuesday's primaries

The Tea Party suffered a night of near-misses in Tuesday's primaries
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Tuesday night's primaries were a series of near-miss defeats for Tea Party insurgent candidates and victories for the Republican establishment — a sharp turnaround from where things were just two weeks ago, when the political world was reeling after the surprise defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Virginia GOP primary.

The most obvious example is the Republican primary runoff in Mississippi, where incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran won with just under 51 percent of the vote — and challenger Chris McDaniel bitterly denounced Cochran and the Republican establishment for having courted Democratic voters to cross over into the GOP primary.

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