The GOP Joy Divisions

The offices of Americans for Tax Reform were cleared out and spruced up. Tuxedoed waiters put out plates of food and placards that offered special cocktails, like the Brownback Derby (bourbon and ginger ale) and the Lois Lerner (“We don’t have it.”) Mementos from the career of ATR’s president, Grover Norquist, were left on the shelves–a New York Post cover commemorating George H.W. Bush’s broken tax pledge, several sets of Soviet nesting dolls.

Revelry was set to begin at 7 p.m., when the first polls closed in Kentucky and Virginia. Peter Roff, a burly conservative columnist and think-tanker-about-town, sat across from Lisa Nelson, the CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council. They assumed the standard Washington, D.C. pose, and checked their phones. Boom: There were the exits polls, as good as they’d heard.