After Mitt Romney's defeat, the RNC released its official assessment of what happened - a failure to reach younger voters, nonwhite voters, women - but was met with a counter-narrative that, in fact, it was Romney's failure to be conservative enough that led to a depressed Republican base.

Trump won 44.4 percent of votes in Virginia in 2016. At press time, Ed Gillespie had won 45 percent of the vote in 2017.

Without a clear diagnosis of why the candidate or party failed, there can be no clear consensus about how to move forward.

Kristen Soltis Anderson Quotes